The Campaign called on international organizations to demand the return of the bodies to allow the next of kin to bury them in a manner befitting human dignity.
Israeli authorities continue to withhold the bodies of 500 Palestinians who died in Israeli jails, including the bodies of 58 detainees since the beginning of 2024, according to the National Campaign to Retrieve the Bodies of the Martyrs.
The Campaign said it considered the withholding of the bodies as a violation of the principles of international humanitarian law and relevant international norms, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.
“Withholding the bodies in the cemeteries and the occupation’s refrigerators constitutes an affront to the human dignity of a person, during his life and after his death, and a collective punishment,” the Campaign said.
‘Forcibly Disappeared’ – Around 1,000 Palestinian Workers Missing in Israel
It urged international organizations to demand the return of the bodies to allow the next of kin to bury them in a manner befitting human dignity.
The Campaign further called on all human rights defenders to pressure Israeli authorities to release them, saying “it is shameful for the world to remain silent about the punishment of a person even after his death.”
Forced Disappearance
On Wednesday, Palestinian human rights organizations highlighted the “enforced disappearance” of around 1,000 workers in Israel.
“Around 1,000 workers remain missing due to the ongoing crime of enforced disappearance against Gaza detainees,” a statement from the Ministry of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club Association, and Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association said.
“According to data from the Palestinian Ministry of Labor, the number of workers from Gaza who were present in the occupied territories in 1948 before the seventh of October was approximately 10,300 Palestinian workers, 3,200 of whom were released at the Karm Abu Salem crossing at the beginning of November 2023.”
Release Details on Fate of Forcibly-Disappeared Detainees – Rights Body Urges Israel
The statement added that some of them “still bore plastic tags on their wrists bearing numbers, and they were released from the detention centers where they were held.”
In February, the Geneva-based Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor called on Israel “to promptly reveal the whereabouts, and fate of all forcibly disappeared detainees,” and to immediately stop “its policy of torture and ill-treatment of Palestinian detainees.”
The call followed testimonies from released Palestinian detainees.
Over 34,000 Killed
Currently on trial before the International Court of Justice for genocide against Palestinians, Israel has been waging a devastating war on Gaza since October 7.
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 34,596 Palestinians have been killed, and 77,816 wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on October 7.
Moreover, at least 11,000 people are unaccounted for, presumed dead under the rubble of their homes throughout the Strip.
Palestinian and international organizations say that the majority of those killed and wounded are women and children.
The Israeli war has resulted in an acute famine, mostly in northern Gaza, resulting in the death of many Palestinians, mostly children.
The Israeli aggression has also resulted in the forceful displacement of nearly two million people from all over the Gaza Strip, with the vast majority of the displaced forced into the densely crowded southern city of Rafah near the border with Egypt – in what has become Palestine’s largest mass exodus since the 1948 Nakba.
Israel says that 1,200 soldiers and civilians were killed during the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on October 7. Israeli media published reports suggesting that many Israelis were killed on that day by ‘friendly fire’.
(PC, WAFA)
