REVIEWER 1 - COMPREHENSIVE REVIEW
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**Review of "THE ARCHITECTURE OF DETENTION: ADMINISTRATIVE CONTROL, TORTURE, AND EPISTEMIC TRUST UNDER GAZA HOSTILITIES (2023-2025)"**

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### **🔍 Step 1. Summary of the Paper**

This manuscript examines administrative detention practices during the Gaza hostilities (2023-2025) as a mechanism of population-level control. The authors analyze data from approximately 9,400 Palestinian detainees using a mixed-methods approach combining quantitative trend analysis (from human rights organizations like OHCHR, B'Tselem, HaMoked) and qualitative thematic coding of 114 witness testimonies. The central claim is that administrative detention systematically creates conditions incompatible with human survival, potentially meeting the threshold for Article II(c) of the Genocide Convention ("deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction"). The paper argues that bureaucratic procedures, combined with epistemic silencing through restricted monitoring access, function as an "architecture" producing slow mortality through systematic deprivation.

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### **🔬 Step 2. Evaluation Criteria**

#### **1. Originality / Novelty**
**Score: 7/10**

The paper synthesizes human rights documentation with theoretical frameworks from genocide studies (Feierstein), epistemic injustice (Fricker), and state-of-exception theory (Agamben) in a conflict context. While human rights reporting on detention conditions exists, the systematic integration of quantitative mortality correlations with qualitative testimonial analysis to argue for Genocide Convention applicability represents a novel contribution. However, the core concept of administrative detention as population control in conflict zones has been explored in previous scholarship (Daniele & Borralho 2025, Hill-Cawthorne 2016).

#### **2. Scientific Rigor / Methodology**
**Score: 5/10**

**Major concerns:**
- **Secondary data limitations:** Complete reliance on human rights organization data without methodological critique of collection procedures, potential selection biases, or verification mechanisms.
- **Causal overreach:** Strong correlational findings (e.g., r=0.86 between overcrowding and mortality) are presented as evidence of systematic causation without addressing confounding variables or alternative explanations.
- **Sampling justification:** Purposive sampling of 114 testimonies from millions affected requires stronger justification for representativeness.
- **Missing methodological details:** No inter-coder reliability statistics provided for qualitative coding, no documentation of how "medical access" was quantified across facilities.

**Strengths:** Methodological triangulation attempt and comprehensive data sources are appropriate for the research questions.

#### **3. Clarity & Presentation**
**Score: 6/10**

The paper is generally well-structured with clear section organization. However:
- **Terminology issues:** Heavy reliance on theoretical jargon ("epistemic silencing," "testimonial erasure") without operational definitions.
- **Overstated conclusions:** Abstract and conclusions contain strong legal claims ("fulfills Genocide Convention conditions") that exceed the evidentiary support.
- **Table formatting:** Tables are informative but lack standard errors, confidence intervals, or measures of variance.
- **Writing style:** Dense academic prose may limit accessibility to interdisciplinary audiences.

#### **4. Reproducibility & Transparency**
**Score: 3/10**

**Critical flaws:**
- No data availability statement or access to raw datasets.
- Qualitative coding framework not provided (codebook, decision rules).
- Missing statistical details: No information on statistical tests beyond correlation coefficients, no model specifications.
- Witness testimony sources are anonymized, preventing verification.

#### **5. Significance & Impact**
**Score: 8/10**

The paper addresses an urgent humanitarian crisis with potential implications for:
- International legal proceedings regarding Gaza hostilities
- Humanitarian policy on detention monitoring
- Methodological approaches to human rights documentation
The findings could influence both academic discourse and practical interventions in conflict zones.

#### **6. Ethics & Integrity**
**Score: 6/10**

**Concerns:**
- **Positionality:** Lack of reflexivity regarding researchers' relationship to the conflict.
- **Informed consent:** Unclear if secondary use of testimonies respected original consent agreements.
- **Trauma sensitivity:** No discussion of ethical protocols for analyzing traumatic testimony.

**Strengths:** Proper attribution to human rights organizations, acknowledgment of monitoring limitations.

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### **🧪 Step 3. Specific Suggestions for Improvement**

#### **Major Revisions Required:**

1. **Methodological transparency:**
   - Provide full statistical output including confidence intervals, p-values, and effect sizes.
   - Include qualitative codebook with code definitions and examples.
   - Document data cleaning and processing procedures.

2. **Causal claims moderation:**
   - Reframe conclusions to acknowledge correlational nature of findings.
   - Discuss potential confounding variables (e.g., general humanitarian conditions in Gaza).
   - Consider alternative explanations for observed patterns.

3. **Theoretical framework:**
   - Operationalize key theoretical terms for empirical application.
   - Justify framework selection over competing explanations.
   - Strengthen the connection between empirical findings and legal analysis.

4. **Ethical considerations:**
   - Add section on researcher positionality and reflexivity.
   - Document ethical review process for secondary trauma data.
   - Discuss limitations of human rights data more critically.

#### **Minor Revisions:**

1. Improve table readability with consistent formatting and clear captions.
2. Define all acronyms at first use (OHCHR, PHRI, ICRC).
3. Standardize citation format throughout references.
4. Reduce jargon and improve narrative flow in discussion section.

#### **Additional Analyses to Strengthen:**

1. Conduct multivariate regression to isolate detention condition effects from other variables.
2. Perform sensitivity analysis for different coding schemes in qualitative analysis.
3. Add comparative analysis with detention practices in other conflict zones.
4. Include power analysis for statistical findings.

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### **📊 Step 4. Final Decision & Justification**

#### **Overall Score: 5.8/10**

#### **Recommendation: REJECT**

**Justification:**

While this manuscript addresses a critically important humanitarian issue with potential field-changing implications, it currently suffers from fatal methodological flaws that preclude publication in a high-impact journal. The complete reliance on secondary data without critical examination of collection methodologies, the overinterpretation of correlational findings as causal evidence, and the lack of transparency in analytical procedures undermine the scientific validity of its central claims.

The strong legal conclusions regarding Genocide Convention applicability are not sufficiently supported by the presented evidence and represent an overreach beyond the study's methodological capabilities. The paper would require fundamental restructuring, additional primary data collection, and significant methodological refinement to meet the standards of rigorous scientific inquiry expected at this level.

However, the topic remains vitally important, and with substantial revision addressing the concerns above, this research could make a valuable contribution to the literature on human rights documentation and conflict studies.

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**Reviewer 01**  
*Expert in Human Rights Documentation and Conflict Studies*  
*Double-blind peer review*