Gaza / PNN – The issue of the bodies of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces and the fate of missing persons has become a major campaign with a comprehensive campaign being called organized to retrieve them.
Palestinian government Minister Magda Al Masri said today, “We do not accept the continued international silence on the subject of bodies of the killed.”
Prisoners’ affairs researcher, Abdel Nasser Farwana said that Israeli authorities have been holding the bodies of 25 martyrs from the Gaza Strip since May of 1994, the post-Oslo era and the introduction of the Palestinian National Authority.
These bodies are not among the missing, but are instead in known cemeteries with the Israeli administration having refused to hand them over to the PA. There are hundreds of killed and missing in addition to these bodies, with part of the campaign for retrieval being from unnamed, numbered graves.
Families are working to retrieve the bodies of their sons in order to bury them in accordance with Islamic law in Islamic cemeteries.
Sixteen of the bodies from Gaza were killed after the beginning of the Al Aqsa Intifada in September 2000. They are considered a small portion of the hundreds of bodies of martyrs held for decades by the occupying authorities.
Ferwana referred to the Israeli policy as “continued punishment after death.”
