Israel continues to hold bodies of 7 Arab-Israelis

Israel’s Security Cabinet decided on Sunday to continue to detain the bodies of seven Palestinian citizens of Israel so that they can be used as bargaining chips in negotiations that may lead to an agreement and a prisoner exchange deal.

The seven are Walid Daqqa, 62, from Baqa Al-Gharbiya, who died in Israeli prisons on 7 April after suffering from cancer and was denied medical treatment. He had spent nearly 40 years in prison. The second was Jumaa Abu Ghanima, 26, from the village of Al-Aasam in the Negev region, who also died in Israeli prisons on 16 March, five days after the occupation announced that he was in a critical condition and transferred him from his cell in Eshel Prison to a hospital. He had been arrested in December 2023 on charges of “joining Hamas and providing information” after infiltrating the Gaza Strip in 2016.

The third is Murshid Abdul-Hay, 30, from the city of Al-Tira, who was killed on 5 February after being shot by Israel Police who claimed he tried to “grab a policeman’s weapon”.

Fadi Abu al-Tayef, 22, from the city of Rahat, who was originally from the Gaza Strip, was killed on 14 March at the Beit Kama junction north of Rahat.

Fifth is Naji Abu Freih, 25, from the city of Rahat, killed on 31 March after an Israeli soldier shot him claiming that he had carried out a stabbing attack.

Twenty-seven-year-old Saad Abu Ghanem, from the city of Ramla, was killed on 26 April after a settler shot him claiming that he had carried out a stabbing attack.

While 20-year-old Jawad Rabi’, from the town of Nahf, was killed on 3 July.

The Israeli authorities have returned the bodies of three Palestinian citizens of Israel since October 2023. They were the bodies of Karim Abu Saleh, 30, from the city of Sakhnin, who was killed on 27 March inside Israeli prisons ten days after his arrest. His funeral was held on 2 May. Wassim Abu Al-Haija, 28, from Tamra was killed on 29 January after being shot by Israeli soldiers near an Israeli naval base in the city of Haifa. His funeral was held on 16 March. The third body was of Wahb Shabita, 26, from Tira, who was killed on 3 April by Israeli live fire. The Israeli Public Prosecution agreed to release Shabita’s body on 16 May.

Commenting on Israel’s policy of withholding the bodies of Palestinians it has killed, Adalah Legal Centre lawyer Nariman Shehadeh-Zouabi said that “the state has no legal authority to detain the bodies.”

Hussein Shujaiyeh, coordinator of the National Campaign for Retrieval of the bodies of Palestinian and Arab War Victims, told Arab48 that “the number of bodies detained by the occupation that we have documented is 565 bodies between those buried in the cemetery of numbers and the refrigerators. This number includes martyrs from the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the [from within Israel], the bodies of six martyrs who are Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, and the bodies of martyrs from the Gaza Strip before October 7, 2023, due to our inability to document them during the war.”

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