A senior UN human rights official has said more than 9,000 Palestinians are currently held in Israeli prisons, warning that detainees face torture, ill-treatment and enforced disappearance.

Neil Tobin, Deputy Head of UN Human Rights in Palestine, gave the figure, which is as of September 2026, while speaking at the 63rd session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva.

He said about a third of the Palestinians in Israeli prisons are held under administrative detention, a system that allows detention without charge or trial. More than 1,000 detainees from Gaza are being held as “unlawful combatants,” he added.

According to Tobin, prison conditions expose Palestinian detainees to prolonged arbitrary deprivation of liberty, torture and other ill-treatment, and enforced disappearance. He said the situation has worsened since 2023, pointing to 92 Palestinian deaths in Israeli custody recorded by the UN Human Rights Office in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

The latest figures point to a sharp rise in detentions since the war in Gaza began. Before October 2023, roughly 5,000 Palestinians were in Israeli detention. A report presented to the Human Rights Council earlier this year by UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese said more than 18,500 Palestinians had been arrested since then, including at least 1,500 children. It also said Israel still held 9,245 Palestinians as of February 2026, among them 3,358 administrative detainees. In May, the UN Special Rapporteur on torture urged Israel to revise its detention laws and practices, and raised concern over a new death penalty law that she said would unfairly target Palestinians.

Deaths in custody have continued to rise. Palestinian prisoner groups said this month that a 21-year-old West Bank man, Moataz al-Atrash, died at Ofer Prison after being held without trial since late last year, bringing the number of known Palestinian detainees who have died in Israeli custody since October 2023 to 92. Around 53 of them were from Gaza, according to the groups.