A Palestinian detainee from Gaza, Amr Hatim Ouda, aged 33 and father of three, has died under torture in Israel’s notorious Sde Teiman detention camp. His death marks yet another harrowing chapter in the ongoing suffering of Palestinians imprisoned since the ground invasion of Gaza began.

Ouda was arrested alongside members of his family from their home on 7 December 2023, shortly after the Israeli ground incursion. His body, like those of many others, bears the marks of systematic torture. Palestinian institutions have sounded the alarm, denouncing Sde Teiman as a site of unspeakable abuse — a place where prisoners are not only stripped of their freedom but of their humanity.

Human rights organisations have recorded at least 70 detainees killed in Israeli custody since the start of the genocide in Gaza, including 44 from the Strip. The toll within the Palestinian captive movement now stands at over 300 documented deaths since 1967. Yet what makes this moment uniquely grim is not just the numbers, but the scale and cruelty of violations taking place behind prison walls — beatings, starvation, sexual violence, denial of medical care, and a policy of humiliation that leaves survivors traumatised, if they make it out alive.

The Israeli army’s attempts to justify or conceal these deaths have only deepened the outrage. Families are kept in the dark, bodies are withheld, and contradictory reports are issued — all while international silence emboldens the perpetrators.

Amr Ouda’s death is not an isolated tragedy. It is part of a broader machinery of violence that has turned Gaza’s detainees into invisible victims of a system built on dehumanisation. Each testimony that emerges from detention reveals not just cruelty but a calculated policy of extermination that targets the imprisoned as deliberately as the bombs target the displaced.

Those responsible must be held to account. Justice delayed for Gaza’s prisoners is justice denied for an entire people.