Israel accused of withholding dead Palestinians in university labs

Palestinian Prime Minister, Muhammad Shtayyeh, has accused Israel of conducting lab experiments on the bodies of Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers in medical schools and universities.

“We have learned that Israel uses these corpses in the labs of medical schools in Israeli universities. This is a brazen assault on human rights and scientific ethics,” said Shtayyeh.

According to The Times of Israel, he also called for an international boycott of Israeli academic institutions.

He said this would “put pressure on the occupation authorities to stop violating the bodies of the martyrs and to immediately release all their detained bodies, so that their families can bid them farewell, in a manner that befits them and respects their feelings.”

According to a local Palestinian committee on the retrieval of dead Palestinians, Israel has withheld 104 Palestinian corpses since 2015, in addition to 256 others buried in special graves known as “numbered graves”.

In response, the Israeli Foreign Ministry denied the accusations and expressed “shock at the hateful words, which are another expression of the Palestinian Authority’s campaign of incitement against Israel.”

“The Foreign Ministry expresses horror at the defamatory remarks, which constitute another expression of the continuing incitement by the Palestinian Authority against Israel. Such incitement encourages shedding the blood of Israeli civilians,” the Ministry said in a statement.

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