With the withholding of bodies of Palestinians recently killed by Israeli forces in the occupied territories, a Palestinian center said on Thursday that Israel is currently holding bodies of 19 Palestinians in morgues in addition to 260 killed since the 1967 occupation.
Director of the Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center (JLAC) Issam Arouri told Voice of Palestine radio that Israeli forces continue to withhold the remains of 260 slain Palestinians in the so-called “numbers cemetery” in the north of Israel in addition to keeping in morgues corpses of 19 Palestinian killed by Israeli forces in the last two years, the earliest withheld since 2016 and the latest was for Hamzeh Zamaareh and Ahmad Nasr Jarrar killed this week.
He said the Israeli authorities have started this policy of withholding the bodies of slain Palestinians even before attempting to make it into law and the Israeli judiciary has contributed to promoting this policy through granting Israeli courts six months to legalize the practice.
He noted that Israel was the only country in the world that withholds the bodies of slain people for bargaining purposes or sets conditions on funerals for releasing them to their families.
(WAFA)
