DaysofPal- The Hamas Movement said Israeli occupation authorities continue to withhold the bodies of hundreds of Palestinians killed over the years, including those taken from the Gaza Strip during the recent war and others held for decades in so-called “numbered graves.” The movement said Israel refuses to return the bodies to their families or provide information about some of them, stressing that this practice is a brutal crime and a flagrant violation of humanitarian values carried out under troubling international silence.
In a statement published Tuesday on its official Telegram channel, Hamas said the suffering of the Palestinian people in Gaza persists, while the families of nearly 10,000 victims continue to endure the pain of knowing that the bodies of their loved ones remain trapped beneath the rubble of destroyed buildings. Hamas attributed this to the two-year war carried out by the occupation and to the severe shortage of resources and heavy equipment, which Israel continues to block from entering Gaza.
The movement pointed out that intense international attention given to the remains of dozens of Israeli soldiers contrasts sharply with the neglect of thousands of Palestinian families whose relatives’ bodies have been forcibly withheld.
Hamas said this reflects a serious moral failure and a dangerous distortion of justice and fairness, calling for urgent international action to pressure Israel to hand over the bodies it is holding, reopen the Rafah crossing, and allow the entry of heavy machinery needed to recover bodies from under the rubble and bury them in a manner that preserves human dignity.
The group renewed its call for the swift empowerment of the national committee to fully assume its responsibilities in the Gaza Strip. This includes opening the Rafah crossing in both directions, launching reconstruction efforts, beginning a comprehensive operation to recover the bodies of the dead, and addressing the issue of missing persons whom Israel continues to forcibly conceal.
Relatedly, the National Campaign for the Recovery of Martyrs’ Bodies and the Disclosure of the Fate of the Missing reported on Tuesday that 776 Palestinian bodies are still being held captive by Israeli authorities in numbered graves and morgues. This statement followed an Israeli army announcement claiming it had located the last body of an Israeli captive in Gaza.
The campaign said that among the 776 documented bodies are 96 prisoners, 77 children under the age of 18, and 10 women, in addition to hundreds of bodies taken from Gaza during the war whose exact numbers and conditions of detention remain unknown.
It stressed that this policy represents a serious and systematic violation of international humanitarian law, particularly the Geneva Conventions, which guarantee human dignity for both the living and the dead.
The campaign also condemned the Israeli army’s exhumation and desecration of more than 250 bodies from cemeteries in Gaza during recent military operations, describing the acts as a grave violation of the sanctity of the dead and the rights of their families. It said such actions lack any legal or humanitarian justification and amount to war crimes that require international accountability.
The campaign called for the immediate and unconditional release of all Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, the return of all withheld Palestinian bodies to their families, and a permanent end to the policy of retaining bodies, which Israel’s Supreme Court previously justified by citing the presence of Israeli captives in Gaza.
It also urged international institutions, particularly the International Committee of the Red Cross, to gain access to detention sites and verify the conditions of detainees. The campaign further demanded an independent international investigation into crimes involving grave desecration in Gaza, accountability for those responsible, and full disclosure of information related to the detention of Palestinian bodies, including records of cases returned to Gaza and those still listed as unidentified.
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