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PLO: Israel blocks 250 bodies of Palestine martyrs

January 16, 2020 at 12:38 pm

Palestinian women visit loved ones in a cemetery in the West Bank City of Nablus on 15 October 2013 [Nedal Eshtayah/Apaimages]

PLO’s Committee of Prisoners and Freed Prisoners announced on Wednesday that Israel continues to block 250 bodies of Palestinian martyrs in its ‘cemeteries of numbers’, Al Watan Voice reported.

According to Hassan Abed-Rabbu, spokesman of the committee, burying the Palestinian martyrs in the ‘cemeteries of numbers’ contradicts all the international human rights laws, including the Geneva Convention.

He also described this Israeli act as “unethical” and a “form of racism,” adding that it is a kind of collective punishment that causes psychological pain for the families and relatives of the martyrs.

“The lack of information about the whereabouts of these cemeteries multiplies the pain of the families of the martyrs,” Abed-Rabbu asserts.

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“These martyrs, all of whom were Muslims, were not buried in the Islamic or the Palestinian way,” stressing that this adds to the suffering of the families.

Abed-Rabbu stated that some of the bodies are blocked by orders from the Israeli defence ministers and some are blocked by judicial decisions.

Both, however, aim to put pressure on Palestinians in order to stop their resistance against the Israeli occupation, or to be used as a bargaining chip in a possible prisoner swap.

Abed-Rabbu recognises that all efforts were exerted to release the bodies had achieved “no tangible results.”

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