ALBAWABA - A number of slain Palestinian prisoners' families in Gaza protest against Israeli forces withholding the bodies of Palestinian prisoners who have lost their lives in Israeli prisons.
The practice of keeping the bodies of slain Palestinian prisoners in numbered graves and freezers is not new to Israeli forces as they have been practicing this since the 1960s. It is believed that this practice is considered as leveraging strategy to obtain the bodies of Israelis held by Palestinian groups.
Khader Adnan, an Islamic Jihad leader, died earlier in May after an 87-day hunger strike protesting his detention by Israeli forces without charges or trial in what is known as administrative detention.
In a statement released recently, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society (PPS) said that the longest withheld body belongs to a Palestinian prisoner identified as Anis Douleh, who died in 1980, Press TV reported.
The Israeli Supreme Court declared in 2019 that the military has the right to withhold the bodies of Palestinians killed during security incidents in order to negotiate their exchange for the bodies of Israelis held by Palestinian militant organizations.
Since 1967, Israeli forces buried the bodies of 251 Palestinians in what is known as "Cemeteries of Numbers", where numbers, only can be identified by Israelis, and are put on Palestinian graves after allegedly assaulting Israelis or after losing their lives in prisons.
