Inside one Palestinian family’s harrowing experience of having their son’s dead body withheld by Israel as a bargaining chip. Israel has held the bodies of 726 Palestinians in refrigerators and the so-called “cemetery of numbers” for decades.
The Israeli colonial regime dominates every aspect of Palestinians’ lives — and in many cases, even after they die. Those who dare to resist are arrested, tortured, or summarily executed, and the indignities they suffer in life extend into their death, manifested in one of Israel’s most morbid colonial practices: withholding the bodies of the slain.
Bilal Rawajba was shot by Israeli forces at the Huwara military checkpoint on November 4, 2020. His family has been trying to determine his whereabouts ever since.
Friends of Sabeel North America joins hundreds of religious leaders across the United States to call for an end to Israel’s unethical and immoral treatment of deceased Palestinians.
Israel has a long-standing policy of refusing to release the bodies of Palestinians who have been killed by its military for burial. This is yet another form of collective punishment, where Israel uses the dead as an example to anyone who dare challenges the apartheid state.
Israeli forces shot and killed four Palestinian young men, including at least two teenagers, during military raids on the Jenin refugee camp in the northern occupied West Bank early Monday morning. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian affairs, Israeli forces have conducted more than 2,500 arrest raids in the West Bank since the beginning of the year.
The State Department briefing is turning into a forum for reporters who are impatient with the charade of a two-state solution. Said Arikat asks what the US is doing about his cousin Ahmed Erekat’s killing at an Israeli military checkpoint in the occupied West Bank last June, and the “torment” of his family because Israel won’t release Ahmed’s body.
Remains of four Palestinians that are subject of court case from their families were buried by Israeli in a “Cemetery of Numbers,” with only numbers marking their graves, instead of being turned over to the families. Azhar Abu Srour has not stopped wearing black for two years because she has not been able to get closure on the death of her son Abed, killed in an attack on an Israeli bus.