Israeli forces desecrated hundreds of graves on Monday, exhuming and examining the remains of around 250 Palestinians in an attempt to recover the body of an Israeli soldier held in Gaza, in a blatant violation of the sanctity of the dead.
GAZA — Israeli forces desecrated hundreds of graves on Monday, exhuming and examining the remains of around 250 Palestinians in an attempt to recover the body of an Israeli soldier held in Gaza, in a blatant violation of the sanctity of the dead.
The Israeli military said that the body of the last remaining Israeli captive in Gaza was found and identified in a mass grave in a Gaza City cemetery, after 250 bodies were examined, Israeli media reported. The announcement came amid statements from the Islamic Jihad resistance movement that Israel had received the location of the body weeks earlier but delayed recovery efforts deliberately.
Israeli media also said the forces desecrated and exhumed 700 graves of Palestinians.
Palestinians have expressed deep concern as the cemetery is located near the so-called “Yellow Line,” where Israeli forces are now deploying. Residents are barred from accessing the area and would be targeted by the forces if they approach, raising serious questions about who will return the bodies.
Over the past two years, Israel has systematically destroyed cemeteries in the Gaza Strip, dug up and vandalised graves, tampered with bodies, and transferred dozens of remains.
Euro-Med Monitor confirmed that the Israeli forces dug up nearly 200 graves in Al-Batsh cemetery in the Shuja’iyya neighbourhood, east of Gaza City, near the Yellow Line amid local reports of heavy shelling and bulldozing during the search with forces carrying out extensive bulldozing operations around the cemetery.
The human rights center stressed that this pretext does not grant “legitimacy to violating the sanctity of the Palestinian dead, tampering with their graves, or desecrating their remains. Any search operations must be strictly limited in scope, subject to stringent humanitarian safeguards, and conducted under neutral international supervision.”
Such practices not only violate the “dignity of the deceased but also inflict severe psychological harm on their families by leaving them in uncertainty about the fate and burial sites of their loved ones, denying them verification or official information, and amounting to cruel treatment and psychological torture of the families of the deceased,” it added.
The Israeli army has destroyed 21 out of 60 cemeteries in the Gaza Strip over the past two years and has systematically vandalised cemeteries and exhumed graves in all areas where it conducted ground incursions, according to reports. These actions included bulldozing graves, extracting remains, and crushing them with military machinery, repeatedly causing the mixing, loss, and disappearance of remains, as well as damage to neighbouring graves.
Based on Euro-Med Monitor documentation over recent months, Israel is systematically violating the sanctity of the dead and cemeteries in clear breach of international humanitarian law and the rules of war, which require the protection of cemeteries during armed conflicts, the respectful treatment of the dead, and the preservation of graves, and prohibit their desecration or tampering.
International humanitarian law prohibits the snatching of dead bodies and affirms that degrading treatment and attacks on dignity, including that of the dead, constitute a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, it said. — QNN
