[News] Palestinian Organisations Send Submission to the Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions on Israel’s Continued Oppression of Palestinians Beyond Their Killing

[Anti-Imperialist News]

addameer.org <https://www.addameer.org/news/5277>
Palestinian Organisations Send Submission to the Special Rapporteur on
Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions on Israel’s Continued
Oppression of Palestinians Beyond Their Killing
February 18, 2024
------------------------------

18-02-2024

On 6 February 2024, in response to a call for input issued
<https://www.ohchr.org/en/calls-for-input/2024/call-input-protection-dead-persons-and-their-human-remains-including-victims>
by
the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or
arbitrary executions for his upcoming report on the protection of dead
persons and their human remains, including of victims of potentially
unlawful killings, Al-Haq, Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights
Association, Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), Al Mezan Center
for Human Rights, and Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center (JLAC)
sent a joint submission underscoring Israel’s continued and systematic
oppression of Palestinians beyond their killing.

Specifically, the submission highlights the mutilation of Palestinian
bodies by the Israeli occupying forces (IOF); the withholding of
Palestinian bodies, including those of prisoners and detainees; the use of
mass graves especially during the ongoing genocide
<https://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/22509.html> in the Gaza Strip; and digging
of Palestinian graves and cemeteries. The submission further places such
draconian policies and practices within the broader context of Israel’s Zionist
settler-colonialism and apartheid regime
<https://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/20931.html>.

Despite the International Court of Justice’s provisional measures order
issued on 26 January 2024, Israel has persisted in over a four-month-long
campaign in Gaza, resulting
<https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-110>
in
the killing of at least 27,365 Palestinians, primarily women and children,
and injuring 66,630 others, as of 4 February 2024. Simultaneously, between
7 October 2023 and 4 February 2024, the IOF and Israeli settlers killed 373
Palestinians, including 95 children and three women, in the occupied West
Bank, including eastern Jerusalem.

Beyond the immediate harm of extrajudicial killings, Israel’s policies
extend to the encroachment upon Palestinian dignity, exemplified through
the desecration and mutilation of Palestinian bodies including by slamming,
picking up, and dragging Palestinians by bulldozers
<https://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/16549.html>, and running over Palestinians
<https://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/21158.html>, and the withholding of
Palestinian bodies, including children, to be used as bargaining chips,
amounting to prohibited collective punishment.

As of 6 February 2024, and according to the documentation of JLAC, the
Israeli occupying authorities are withholding the bodies of 205 Palestinian
residents of the West Bank, including 26 children, two women and 17
prisoners or detainees; indefinitely depriving them of dignified burial. In
addition, 28-year-old Waseem Abu Al-Heija, a Palestinian with Israeli
citizenship, was killed on 29 January 2024, and his body has been withheld
by the Israeli authorities since then. Moreover, since 7 October 2023,
Israel has been withholding the bodies of hundreds of killed Palestinian
residents of the Gaza Strip, with the exact count unverifiable due to
constraints imposed by Israel. According to the latest information
available to the organisations, as reported, 291 decomposed Palestinian
bodies, previously withheld by Israeli authorities, have been released and
buried in mass graves in Gaza.

Indeed, mass graves stand as a grim testament to Israel’s colonial
oppression against Palestinians since its establishment, including during
the *Nakba *
<https://forensic-architecture.org/investigation/executions-and-mass-graves-in-tantura-23-may-1948>of
1948
<https://forensic-architecture.org/investigation/executions-and-mass-graves-in-tantura-23-may-1948>.
The burial of Palestinians, often unidentified, in mass graves
<https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-48>
remains
a common practice in Gaza since 7 October 2023, due to the extensive and
unprecedented level of Israel’s killing, to the extent that even hospital
courtyards have been transformed
<https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-flash-update-40>
into
sites of mass burial. Furthermore, especially in IOF-deployed areas, where
danger is compounded, the bodies of thousands of killed Palestinians,
including women and children, remain trapped under the rubble
<https://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/22385.html>, as the IOF prevents rescue and
medical teams from reaching these areas, leaving the bodies to decompose.

The submission further highlights the Israeli military’s targeting and
disregarding the sanctity of Palestinian lives and memories during the
ongoing genocide in Gaza including through the reported bombing and
bulldozing of at least six graveyards and cemeteries
<https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/14/world/middleeast/gaza-cemeteries-damage-israel.html>,
as well as the excavating and exhuming of a mass grave
<https://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/22388.html> in Kamal Adwan Hospital where
26 Palestinian bodies had been buried. Notably, this pattern of desecrating
Palestinian cemeteries is not a new practice, as Israel had previously
engaged in similar actions in al-Yousofiyya Cemetery in Jerusalem in 2021
for the purposes of establishing a national park
<https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2021/10/31/palestinians-vow-to-defend-graves-in-jerusalem-cemetery>
over
parts of the cemetery.

Finally, underscoring that the Israeli judicial system is itself a tool by
which the pervasive impunity imposed and enjoyed by Israel is maintained
and entrenched, the joint submission urged the Special Rapporteur to:

   - Recognise that Israel’s systematic and institutionalised excessive use
   of force and withholding of bodies contribute to the maintenance of
   Israel’s settler-colonialism and apartheid;
   - Address the ongoing Israeli genocide against Palestinians in Gaza,
   including the high level of killings, which forced the creation of mass
   graves, denying Palestinians safe and dignified burial, and the Israeli
   military’s digging of cemeteries; and
   - Urge UN Member States to reconstitute the UN Special Committee against
   Apartheid and the UN Centre against Apartheid as critical steps towards
   ending Israel’s institutionalised impunity, settler-colonialism and
   apartheid.
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