Annisa Essack | kzn@radioislam.org.za
28 August 2025 | 07:15
2-minute read

On the National Day for the Retrieval of Martyrs’ Bodies, Palestinians confront one of the most haunting dimensions of the occupation: their loved ones are not only killed, but their remains are withheld. For decades, Israel has denied Palestinian families the basic right to bury their dead with dignity, instead storing corpses in refrigerated morgues or consigning them to unmarked mass graves known as “cemeteries of numbers.”

This is not a byproduct of war. It is deliberate policy, designed to extend domination beyond life into death itself.

Control Through Death

Scholars describe this practice as necropolitics—the exercise of power through control over death and life. Families are forced to live in limbo, unable to grieve properly or perform the rituals that every culture considers sacred. Funerals, when allowed, take place under suffocating restrictions: nighttime burials with only a handful of mourners, watched over by armed police. This is not security; it is humiliation as a strategy.

From Improvisation to Institution

What once seemed like a grim improvisation has been woven into Israel’s legal system. In 2018, the Knesset amended the Anti-Terror Law to permit withholding bodies explicitly. The Supreme Court later upheld the practice, justifying it as a tool for “bargaining.” By 2020, the scope was expanded to cover nearly all Palestinians accused of attacks.

Through a mixture of legislation and judicial approval, what international law defines as a violation of human dignity has been normalised and institutionalised. The Geneva Conventions require that the dead be treated respectfully and returned to their families. Israel has instead codified the opposite.

The Human Cost

The toll is devastating. According to the National Campaign for the Retrieval of Martyrs’ Bodies, at least 725 bodies remain withheld, among them children, women, and prisoners. Some parents receive their children back frozen, mutilated, or years later, under conditions designed to strip even mourning of its humanity: cash deposits, bans on public funerals, or burials imposed far from family cemeteries. Others are left waiting endlessly, not knowing where their loved ones lie.

This is a punishment that reaches past the grave. It robs families of closure, transforms grief into permanent uncertainty, and denies entire communities the dignity of memory.

International Law, Selectively Applied

The silence of the international community is as disturbing as the policy itself. When violations occur elsewhere, the call for accountability is loud. Yet when it comes to Palestinians, the rules appear negotiable. Bodies are reduced to bargaining chips, and international law becomes an instrument of double standards.

Why This Matters

The treatment of the dead is a universal marker of humanity. Every culture and every faith holds burial rites as sacred. To withhold bodies is to attack not only individuals, but the collective identity of a people. It is an attempt to erase memory itself.

Palestinians understand this. Their struggle to retrieve the bodies of their loved ones is not only about closure—it is about refusing erasure. It is about insisting that, even in death, dignity is non-negotiable.

The world must decide whether to look away or to recognise what this policy represents: an occupation that does not end with life, but seeks to dominate even in death.