Israel’s refusal to hand over the body of a prominent prisoner who died on a hunger strike this week has drawn renewed attention to its practice of keeping the remains of dozens of Palestinians in freezers and numbered graves, in part as leverage to dispose of the bodies. of detained Israelis. by Palestinian groups.
Khader Adnan, a leader of the Palestinian armed group Islamic Jihad who was arrested by Israel on suspicion of supporting terrorism, was the first Palestinian to die on a hunger strike in an Israeli prison in more than 30 years. Israel has not returned his body to his family since his death on Tuesday, and the government would not say whether it intends to do so.
“It’s a collective punishment,” said Hassan Jabareen, the director of Adalah, a Palestinian human rights organization and legal center. “These are bodies of people living under Israeli occupation,” he added. Many other Palestinians and international human rights organizations have echoed this criticism, saying that withholding bodies collectively punishes the families of the dead and could violate international law.
Since the Israeli occupation of the West Bank in 1967, Israeli authorities have preserved the bodies of hundreds of Palestinians who died in prison or died in security incidents. Some keep them in the freezer of the National Center of Forensic Medicine for years, or bury them in graves without headstones in what Palestinians call “the cemetery of the numbers,” according to the Jerusalem Legal Aid & Human Rights Center.
In 2019, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that the military has the authority to hold the bodies of Palestinians captured during security incidents for negotiation, specifically to exchange them for the bodies of Israelis held by Palestinian groups. Israeli officials have also suggested in the past that they believe holding the bodies could deter future Palestinian attacks and prevent the glorification of the dead at funerals, which could draw large, angry crowds.
Naftali Bennett, then Secretary of Defense, said in 2020: “We hoard the bodies of terrorists to hurt and pressure the other side,” and we “keep them with us as a bargaining chip.”
Israel says Hamas, the Palestinian armed group that controls Gaza, is holding two Israeli civilians believed to be still alive and the remains of two Israeli soldiers killed in a 2014 war between Hamas and Israel.
Israel has preserved about 130 bodies since 2015, some buried in cemeteries but most in freezers. They included the bodies of 12 other prisoners in addition to Mr Adnan’s, according to the Jerusalem Judicial Center. In total, more than 250 bodies are buried in the numbered cemeteries and some date back to the 1970s and 1980s, the center said.
The Israeli army does not want to give figures on the detained bodies.
Israeli authorities arrested Mr. Adnan on February 5 and he immediately went on a hunger strike to protest against his detention. He was found unconscious in his cell on the morning of the 87th day and later pronounced dead.
Israel’s Defense Ministry and the Prime Minister’s office declined to comment on whether a decision has been made on whether to return his body to the family, or where it is being held. The prison service said it handed the body over to the military on Tuesday, the day of his death, but a military spokesman said on Wednesday it was not in their possession and had not clarified the body’s location as of Friday.
Israeli media have reported that the government has no intention of handing over the body to the family.
Mr Adnan’s death sparked widespread condemnation among Palestinians and allegations that Israel was responsible. The Israel Prison Service denied responsibility and said Mr Adnan had chosen to go on a hunger strike and refused medical treatment.
Islamic Jihad and Hamas promised retaliation and throughout Tuesday they fired a barrage of rockets into southern Israel. Israel responded with a series of airstrikes on Gaza, which killed a 58-year-old man, Gaza’s health ministry said.
On Wednesday, the United Nations, Qatar and Egypt brokered a ceasefire and the same mediators are now working to free Mr Adnan’s body, Islamic Jihad spokesman Tariq Salmi and others said.
“Holding the bodies is a testament to the crimes of the occupation,” Salmi said.
In their public statements welcoming the ceasefire, both Islamic Jihad and Hamas demanded the return of Mr Adnan’s body. But the release of his remains was not a condition of the ceasefire, Mr Salmi said.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has called on Israel to return the body “so that his family may mourn and arrange for a dignified burial according to their customs and beliefs”. It said it was ready to facilitate the transfer if requested.
Hours after his death, Mr. Adnan, Randa Adnan, that the Palestinian Authority, which controls parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and Palestinian armed groups are obliged to honor his last wish to be buried near his father in his home village of Arraba on the West Bank.
“We want the sheikh among us,” she said, referring to a religious honorific title given to her husband. “And we want him to be buried next to his father, as he wanted.”