Zionist colonialism has, from its earliest days, openly practiced policies aimed at dominating all aspects of life, palpable or otherwise. Israel inherited its colonialist policies from British imperialism which prepared for and contributed to the creation of the occupation state. These policies have included imprisonment, the erection of the racist wall, checkpoints, watchtowers, land annexations and seizures, murder, and violations of human rights. One might say that these imperialist policies are measures which can be plainly observed and whose effects on Palestinian society can be immediately detected. But Zionist colonialism has also resorted to more hidden measures which include retaining the bodies of martyrs.
This paper discusses the long history of retaining the bodies of martyrs, the motives behind this policy and its escalating employment since the start of the ongoing genocide on Gaza. It relies upon official statistics dealing with this issue, on analysis of what has been written about it, testimonies of the families of these martyrs, and analysis of the data and statistics assembled by the national campaign to free the bodies of martyrs.
Retaining the bodies of Palestinian martyrs: a long history of violence
We might define the policy of retaining the bodies of Palestinian martyrs as one which denies Palestinian families the right to bid farewell to their martyrs and to bury them according to their customs and beliefs. This is because the Israeli occupation regime steals the bodies of martyrs and retains them for various periods in cemeteries with numbered graves or else in morgues, most recently in the Sde Timan concentration camp.[1]
The occupation, by stealing and retaining the bodies of martyrs, goes further than simply denying the right of families to examine the bodies, claiming that this policy constitutes a strong bargaining point in any future exchange deal to be concluded with the Palestinian resistance. However, it is nothing but an attempt to control the lives of Palestinians, the living as well as the dead, and to deter them from resisting the occupation.[2] Thus, states Suhad Zahir-Nashif, the Palestinian body “becomes embroiled directly and daily in the political domain, and on his/her skin is carved, alive or dead, the Israeli colonialist instruments of control and domination.”[3]
This policy appears at first to be one of punishing the families of martyrs but is in reality a complex colonialist policy aimed at destroying the social norms and values of a society and its relationship to the bodies of the dead and martyred, and can be regarded as yet another colonialist stratagem like collective punishment and administrative detention. The lengthy history of this and other imperialist policies practiced in Palestine goes back to the days of British imperialism. This is when the martyrs Muhammad Jamjum and `Ata al-Zir from Hebron, and Fu’ad Hijazi from Safad were hanged by the British on June 17, 1930, in Acre prison and later buried in Acre, far from their native towns and family graveyards. When the British Mandate buried them, this might be regarded as the earliest instance of denying the rights of families of martyrs and a means of punishing and tormenting their families in that era.[4]
In later days, the British Mandate developed that policy and included it in the Emergency Regulations (defense) of 1945 where Article 133 (iii) for instance states that “it shall be lawful for a Military Commander to order that the dead body of any person executed in the Central Acre Prison or the Central Prison in Jerusalem to be buried in the cemetery of the religious sect the dead person belongs to as may be directed.”[5] These emergency regulations developed further and passed from the British Mandate to Israel’s occupation which introduced these regulations into the laws that administer Palestine. The occupation regime thus employed all its legal instruments to maintain retention of the bodies of martyrs.
This policy escalated during the Al-Aqsa Intifada when the Israeli army held back the bodies of Palestinian martyrs, burying them as numbers in military cemeteries located in the Aghwar, Jawlan and Naqab regions.
The graves carry numbered metal plaques and not names. When the Jerusalem uprising began in October 2015, the occupation regime adopted several measures to punish and deter the Palestinians, among which was to activate the policy of retaining the bodies of the dead for reasons of “security and public order.” During that uprising the occupation retained hundreds of bodies in morgues, especially in the Forensic Medical Institute known as Abu Kabir.[6]
The right to burial: Zionist death politics
The Palestinians are fully aware of the fact that the Zionist occupation regime seeks through its policies of punishment to control the bodies of Palestinians, alive or dead, and to control everything that has to do with their existence. These policies include erasing their values and heritage which constitute the structure, nature, and identity of Palestinian society. Retaining the bodies of martyrs is a matter that transcends the mere prevention of families from exercising their right to bury their sons and daughters but extends to cover defining when, where and how condolences may be received together with the social consequences issuing from the type of funeral, burial and place of condolences. This necessarily affects the structure of the family and its relationship to the martyred person and how these families deal with death in general, and the spirituality attached to a martyr’s death in particular, all of which serves to undermine the very structure of Palestinian society.
On a broad humanitarian level, it is universally accepted that a dead person has the right to be buried in his/her homeland, particularly so in the case of a martyr. The Palestinians have struggled and still struggle to obtain that right. The demand to recover dead bodies and to honor martyrs is based upon several laws which specify dealing with the dead and returning dead bodies. Thus, international humanitarian law specifies five principles that govern treatment of the dead in war and their burial which include Principle 112 that governs searching for and gathering the dead, Principle 113 which specifies protecting the dead from plunder or mutilation, Principle 114 which speaks of returning dead bodies and their personal possessions, Principle 115 which speaks of disposal of dead bodies, and Principle 116 concerning specifying the identity of the dead.[7]
Article 17 of the First Geneva Convention of 1949 stresses the importance of conducting a suitable and decent burial and calls on all parties to a conflict “to ensure a decent burial of the dead, and if possible in accordance with the teachings of the religion of the dead person, to respect their graves, to gather them if possible according to their national identity, to maintain and distinguish these graves so as to be identifiable at all times.”[8] Furthermore, Article 120 of the Third Geneva Convention[9] and Article 130 0f the Fourth Geneva Convention[10] as well as Article 34 of the Appended Protocol explicitly affirm the obligation to return the bodies and remains of the dead.[11]
Retention of dead bodies escalates in the West Bank
Since the start of the genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023, the policy of retaining the bodies of martyrs has been applied ever more extensively. The National Campaign to Recover the Bodies of Martyrs has until the present moment recorded the retention of 569 bodies of martyrs, divided into 256 martyrs in numbered cemeteries, a number that the National Campaign has been able to authenticate since 1967, and 313 since the reapplication of the policy of retaining bodies which began in 2015. Among them are 55 martyred children less than 18 years old and 32 martyrs from the Prisoners’ Movement who met martyrdom inside the occupation’s prison camps, and 9 women martyrs.[12]
The following graph is based upon the list of martyrs whose bodies have been retained as documented by the National Campaign until the present writing. I have also carried out a comparative study of the rise in the number of martyrs whose bodies have been retained from 2016 and until the present moment.
To be noted too is that the occupation regime retains the bodies of 6 martyrs of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon who met martyrdom during military operations in northern occupied Palestine.[13] The policy of retaining bodies also became more widespread in Palestinian territories occupied in 1948, where the occupation regime holds onto the bodies of 7 martyrs, the last of whom was Walid Daqqa. This was done by order of the “Occupation War Council” which refused to surrender the bodies of martyrs in order to use them as bargaining chips in an exchange deal.[14] This represents a change in policy since the regime had not previously held on to bodies of martyrs from the Palestinian 1948 territories but would hand them over within days, subject to satisfying burial conditions and providing financial guarantees, since these martyrs held Israeli nationality. Therefore, at that time, the retention of their bodies as an instrument of pressure in an exchange deal didn’t apply to them as it did to the other martyrs.
To be noted too is the fact that, since the return in 2015 to a policy of retaining bodies, 53% of martyrs presently documented are martyrs who met their death since the start of the ongoing war, where the regime retains 167 martyrs[15] out of 313 held back since 2016. The above Table shows that 81 bodies of martyrs were retained in 2023. In view of the dates of retention, we notice that 54% (44 martyrs) have been held since October 7, 2023 and until the end of the year. Since the start of this ongoing war of genocide, the occupation regime has intentionally retained the largest number of bodies of martyrs to use as bargaining points in forthcoming exchange deals with the resistance, especially since the resistance holds the bodies of soldiers and settlers. One also notes that handing over bodies of martyrs has dropped considerably as the occupation regime handed over only 11 martyred bodies since October 7 and until today.[16]
Retaining the bodies of Gazan martyrs
As the genocidal war on Gaza proceeds, exact information about those martyred on October 7 or those whose bodies were stolen from Gaza is unavailable. What the Palestinian side has actually documented is that on November 18, 2023, and during Israel’s assault on the Al-Shifa Medical Center in Gaza, the occupation army stole the bodies of 145 martyrs, some of whom were removed from a recently prepared graveyard inside the Center.[17] On January 6, 2024, as the occupation army stormed the Daraj quarter in Gaza, the Hayy cemetery was dug up by the Israeli army which proceeded to steal 150 bodies of martyrs, according to the Gaza Government Information Office. The same thing occurred when the occupation army assaulted Khan Yunis where the cemetery of the Austrian quarter was destroyed on January 17, 2024, and an unknown number of bodies was removed. At the time, the army of occupation alleged that the purpose was to conduct DNA tests on them to ensure no Israeli prisoners were among them.
In July 2024, some information became available regarding the bodies of Gazan martyrs that were retained when the Israeli newspaper Haaretz revealed that the Israeli occupation regime was holding back around 1500 martyred Palestinians who were unidentified and kept in refrigerated containers inside the military concentration camp known as Sde Timan, and that the bodies held numbers but no names. The newspaper added that the bodies had reached a certain degree of decomposition, that some bodies lacked limbs, and that others lacked a visage. It is likely that these bodies belonged to martyrs who met their death in the early days of the genocide on Gaza.[18]
The occupation regime had already released in stages the bodies of 423 martyrs who were then buried in collective cemeteries in Khan Yunis and Rafah. That intensified the sense of loss for hundreds of Gazan families waiting to hear the fate of their family members.[19] To be noted here is that the complexity of this issue on the level of the Palestinians is that the medical sector in Palestine has no facilities to conduct DNA tests,[20] hence the future need to exhume these graveyards with the vast numbers of their dead and remove samples for testing to be compared with families of those missing in order to determine identities.
Therefore, given the ongoing genocide and a war conducted without any regard to humanitarian or moral principles, there has come to exist thousands of missing persons and others forcibly detained, making it especially difficult to determine their fate while the genocide is proceeding, the killing machine persists, and access to martyred bodies is denied. Eventually, the bodies will decompose and their identities will be lost.
Retaining bodies as bargaining chips
The occupation regime used the bodies of martyrs for the first time as bargaining chips with the Palestinians when a request was submitted to Israel’s Supreme Court in 1994, on behalf of the family of the martyr Hasan `Abbas, a member of the Al-Qassam brigades whose body was retained by the occupation. At that time the Prosecutor General made it a condition for releasing the body of `Abbas that the body of Ilan Sa`dun, an Israeli soldier killed in 1989, should first be found. The Court decided that finding the Israeli soldier’s body before releasing the body of `Abbas was “to a certain extent a reasonable condition” and a legitimate justification.
The use of Palestinian corpses as bargaining chips had been a subject of legal dispute since the Nineties of last century. The Israeli Supreme Court had made that policy legal, considering its use to be legitimate within the purview of the law as based upon “reasonableness” and “appropriateness.” The Court based its ruling upon the Defense Regulations (Emergency) which date back to the British Mandate, and the policy has since been interpreted in diverse ways, leading to conflicting interpretations in the courts as regards the legality of that policy.[21]
The latest decisions adopted by the occupation regime regarding this issue appeared in September 2019, when Israel’s Supreme Court approved the retention of bodies and their use as bargaining chips in future exchange deals based on Article 133 of the British Emergency Law. The Court’s decision applies also to bodies buried in numbered cemeteries and it permitted transferal of bodies held in refrigerators to numbered cemeteries when all registration and documentation procedures are concluded.[22]
Recovering the bodies of martyrs
Ever since the occupation regime resorted to a policy of retaining the bodies of martyrs, the martyrs’ families have struggled, on an individual level, to recover their loved ones and some have succeeded, such as the family of the martyr `Ali Taha.[23] The National Campaign to Recover the Bodies of Martyrs and discover the fate of missing persons was launched in 2018 upon the initiative of the Jerusalem Center for Legal Aid and Human Rights. The Campaign has achieved some results. It has been able to set up an archive regarding retained bodies, especially in view of the lack of official data regarding them and of legal documentation at that time. This was specifically done in order to highlight a central issue hitherto absent from the Palestinian legal, political and official agenda, and because no mention was made of martyrs’ bodies in negotiations that followed the Oslo Accords even though the issue of prisoners was an important point in political discussions.
The Campaign began its legal activity by attempting to recover the body of the martyr Mashhur al-`Aruri, from `Arura in the Ramallah district, after having documented that case, and the `Aruri family was able to recover his body from a numbered cemetery where he had lain since August 10, 2010. Likewise, the family of Hafiz Abu Zant from the city of Nablus was able to recover the body of its martyred son on October 9, 2011, following legal efforts.[24]
In July, 2012, the occupation regime handed over the bodies of 91 martyred men and women to the Palestinian Authority within what were called “good will” initiatives to resume negotiations.[25] In the period between 2013 and 2014, that regime released the bodies of 27 martyred men and women as ordered by the Israeli Supreme Court which mandated the release of 36 bodies, but the occupation reneged on this, citing what it termed “security reasons.”
Since the policy of retaining bodies was resumed in 2015, the occupation regime has released the bodies of 262 martyrs kept in refrigeration for periods ranging from days to years. Some families of martyrs were subjected to very harsh conditions such as night burial, paying exorbitant fees and limiting the number of people who could join a funeral procession. These conditions were principally imposed on families of martyrs from Jerusalem and the ’48 territories.[26]
The exchange of bodies was raised as a principal issue during current exchange negotiations. The third stage of the framework of the deal included exchange of bodies once identified. This is the first time the subject of bodies of martyrs has been raised in an exchange deal with the Palestinians where the resistance holds the bodies of Israeli prisoners. The bodies of 517 martyrs were released during exchange negotiations between the Israeli occupation regime and the Lebanese Hizbullah as well as the Syrian army, the latest round being the exchange deal concluded in 2008, when more than 200 bodies of martyrs, Palestinian, Lebanese and Arabs, were released after having been held in numbered cemeteries.[27]
Conclusion
A young man named Muhammad Hasan Abu Ghannam met martyrdom near the approach to his native town of al-Tur, east of occupied Jerusalem. This took place on July 23, 2017, during a popular uprising which broke out in protest against placing military checkpoints at the entrances to al-Aqsa mosque. The striking thing was what happened to his body once his martyrdom was announced at the Maqasid Hospital in Jerusalem. Muhammad’s friends “managed to smuggle his body out of hospital before the occupation forces could kidnap and hold it and gave it a quick and appropriate burial.”[28]
This incident and others like has to do with the recovery of the bodies of martyrs and expresses the great importance attached by the Palestinians to the recovery of their martyrs’ bodies, their refusal to bargain over this issue and their determination not to forget them even after the passing of decades. It further illustrates the importance of proper burial and condolences rituals to the families of martyrs and the release of bodies since this acts as a challenge to colonialist policy. This is an issue that requires a collective endeavor to recover these bodies which constitute an important part of our collective memory of struggle, and in order to protect our social heritage and cultural norms in the face of an occupation intent on robbing us of our humanity.
In the ongoing genocidal war, the policy of retaining the bodies of martyred Palestinians is still being practiced as part of continuous colonialist violence. This latter has escalated on all levels and aims at gaining mastery not simply on the land and people of Palestine but on their martyred bodies as well. This widespread policy of retaining bodies, practiced all the way from Gaza, the West Bank and the ’48 regions to Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, is part of a larger strategic plan that seeks to pressure Palestinians by stealing their martyrs, violating their bodies, and using them as bargaining chips in any exchange deal.
[1] "جيش الاحتلال يحتجز جثامين شهداء في معسكر سدي تيمان"، "ألترا صوت".
[2] بدور حسن، "دفء أبنائنا".
[3] سهاد ظاهر - ناشف، "الاعتقال الإداري للجثامين الفلسطينية: تعليق الموت وتجميده"، "مجلة الدارسات الفلسطينية"، صيف 2016.
[4] عوض الرجوب، "92 عاماً على ʾالثلاثاء الحمراءʿ.. ماذا فعل الشهداء الفلسطينيون الثلاثة قبيل إعدامهم؟"، "الجزيرة نت"، 17/6/2022.
[5] نظام الدفاع (الطوارئ) لعام 1945، موقع الموسوعة التفاعلية للقضية الفلسطينية.
[6] مقابلة مع المحامي محمد أبو سنينة الذي يعمل على قضايا احتجاز الشهداء.
[7] قواعد القانون الدولي الإنساني، موقع اللجنة الدولية للصليب الأحمر.
[8] اتفاقية جنيف لعام 1949، موقع اللجنة الدولية للصليب الأحمر.
[9] اتفاقية جنيف الثالثة، موقع جامعة منيسوتا.
[10] اتفاقية جنيف الرابعة، موقع جامعة منيسوتا.
[11] البروتوكول الإضافي لجنيف، موقع الأمم المتحدة.
[12] ورقة حقائق\ موقع مقابر الأرقام، 8/2024.
[13] المصدر نفسه.
[14] "لإبقائهم كورقة مساومة: ʾالكابينتʿ الإسرائيلي يقرّر عدم تحرير جثامين 7 شهداء من الـ48 بينهم المناضل وليد دقّة"، موقع وكالة "وفا"، 2/9/2024.
[15] البروتوكول الإضافي لجنيف، موقع الأمم المتحدة.
[16] "الشهداء المحررين خلال عام 2024"، موقع الحملة الوطنية لاسترداد جثامين الشهداء.
[17] "سرقة الاحتلال لجثامين شهداء بغزة تثير الغضب بمواقع التواصل"، "الجزيرة"، 22/5/2024.
[18] "مفهرسة بأرقام.. الاحتلال يحتجز جثامين 1500 فلسطيني في ʾسدي تيمانʿ"، موقع "التلفزيون العربي"، 16/7/2024.
[19] البروتوكول الإضافي لجنيف، موقع الأمم المتحدة.
[20] "ماذا لو وُجد فحص الـ (DNA) في فلسطين؟"، موقع "وكالة معا"، 2/11/2013.
[21] بدور حسن، مصدر سبق ذكره.
[22] قرار المحكمة العليا الإسرائيلية رقم 10190/17.
[23] هنادي عدامة، "رحلةُ البحث عن جثمان علي"، موقع "متراس"، 9/5/2018.
[24] "الجهود القانونية التي رافقت استرداد جثمان الشهيد حافظ أبو زنط"، مركز معلومات وادي حلوة، 11/10/2011.
[25] "تشييع 91 شهيداً في فلسطين"، "الجزيرة نت"، 1/6/2012.
[26] “Adalah demands Israel immediately return bodies of Al Aqsa shooting suspects,”Adalah, 20/7/2017.
[27] "تحرير جثامين الشهداء العرب والفلسطينيين خلال صفقات التبادل"، الحملة الوطنية لاسترداد جثامين الشهداء المحتجزة والكشف عن مصير المفقودين.
[28] "أبو غنام.. لاحقه جنود الاحتلال بالمستشفى حتى استشهد"، "الجزيرة نت"، 24/8/2017.