“Israel has a long and shameful history of desecrating and abusing Palestinian bodies from the state’s earliest days and throughout its existence,” according to Gisha, an Israeli human rights organization.
By Maureen Clare Murphy, reposted from Electronic Intifada, July 16, 2026
Israeli authorities have effectively acknowledged “that they are holding bodies as bargaining chips but without any formulated policy or legal authority to do so,” the human rights group Gisha states in a new report.
For the past two years, Gisha, which is based in Israel, has been taking legal measures to demand “the return of the bodies of three Gaza residents who died after being detained by Israeli forces.”
At least 68 of the 104 Palestinians who are known to have died or been killed in Israeli custody since October 2023 are from the Gaza Strip. The actual number of people who have died is estimated to be higher.
“Nine months after the ceasefire agreement came into effect on 10 October 2025, many families in the Gaza Strip are still waiting for information about loved ones who went missing during the war,” according to Gisha.
Families who have learned that their loved ones died in Israeli custody are also waiting “for information about the circumstances of their death and for the return of the bodies for burial.”
The rights group said that Israeli authorities have provided families “with partial, inaccurate and sometimes misleading information” and have delayed investigation and failed to disclose the findings of the circumstances of death.
State cannot locate body
According to Gisha, the state cannot find the body of Rami, a father of five from Gaza who was working in construction in Israel on 7 October 2023, after which all work permits were revoked.
Rami was swept up in a mass arrest operation and – after he was denied medical treatment for symptoms of diabetes, and following being severely beaten during his arrest – died a few days after he was detained. More than two years after the man’s death, the state stated that it could not locate his body.
Meanwhile, Rami’s wife and two of their children were killed during Israel’s attacks in Gaza, according to Adham, Rami’s brother, who is now caring for the couple’s two surviving children.
Gisha was informed that Khaled, a paramedic from Khan Younis who was arrested while on duty in Gaza in December 2023, had died the same day he was detained at the notorious Sde Teiman military detention camp.
A physician representing Khaled’s family was present when an autopsy was carried out in May 2025 “but his participation was conditioned on his signing a pledge of confidentiality regarding its findings.”
“More than a year after the autopsy was performed, the family has still not received information regarding its findings,” Gisha said. “They also do not know where he died, whether in Gaza or in Israel, about the circumstances of his death, why his body continues to be held by Israel, or when, if ever, it will be returned to his family for burial.”
Ayman, a journalist, was abducted during a raid on his family’s Gaza City home in December 2023. His family did not know his whereabouts after the raid and his brother searched the bodies brought to the morgue of Al-Shifa Hospital for a month.
The authorities responded to a September 2024 request for information from Gisha, saying “there was ‘no indication’ that he was being held in detention, echoing dozens of other similar laconic responses Gisha and other organizations received in response to habeas corpus inquiries.”
Following a May 2025 petition, and after repeated requests for extensions by the state, the Israeli authorities announced that Ayman “had died in custody.”
Only in July this year did the state disclose that “Ayman was transferred to a “’temporary detention facility at the Erez crossing,’ [which separates Gaza from Israel] and died there that same day,” Gisha said.
The state claims that Ayman was a Hamas militant, which his family rejects. The authorities said that his body is being held “as the body of a militant for bargaining chip purposes” – despite Hamas and other armed groups having released all living and dead captives who were held in Gaza.
“Long and shameful history”
“Israel has a long and shameful history of desecrating and abusing Palestinian bodies from the state’s earliest days and throughout its existence,” according to Gisha.
This has involved “cases of denial of burial to Palestinians, improper burial in unmarked graves, or burial in secret locations, practices Israel has used to suppress collective mourning or resistance, to punish the families of the deceased, and to harm entire communities.”
Israel routinely withholds the bodies of Palestinians, including children, killed by its forces in the West Bank and is withholding the body of Walid Ahmad, a boy from the West Bank who died in Israeli detention after being denied food, water and medical care early last year.
In 2019, Israel’s high court approved the state’s use of Palestinian bodies as bargaining chips.
Israel released the bodies of hundreds of Palestinians following the nominal ceasefire for Gaza declared in October 2025. Those bodies were transferred to Gaza in a state of advanced decomposition and authorities say that many of the bodies bore signs of abuse and execution.
In February this year, “Israel was holding 766 bodies of Palestinians who have been identified and at least another 10 bodies of known foreign nationals,” according to journalist Amira Hass in the Israeli daily Haaretz.
“Of these, 373 bodies came into Israel’s possession since 7 October 2023, including 88 people who were in custody of the military or the Israel Prison Service and died either due to proven deterioration in incarceration conditions or violence by their jailers,” Hass added.
“Only two of the 88 people – one Israeli citizen and one Palestinian from the West Bank – were prisoners who had been convicted through a judicial process.”
*The writeup from Gisha can be found here.*
Maureen Clare Murphy is the managing editor of the Electronic Intifada.
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