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<h1 class="page__title title balance-text" id="page-title">Mother
waits 36 years for Israel to return son’s body</h1>
<header class="node__header">
<p class="node__submitted">
<span class="field field-author"><a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/budour-youssef-hassan"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel"
datatype="">Budour Youssef Hassan</a></span>
<br>
<span class="field field-publication-date"><span
class="date-display-single" property="dc:date"
datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2015-11-02T18:32:00+00:00">2
November 2015<br>
<b><small><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/mother-waits-36-years-israel-return-sons-body/14969">https://electronicintifada.net/content/mother-waits-36-years-israel-return-sons-body/14969</a></small></small></small></b><br>
</span></span> </p>
</header>
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<p>For the last 36 years, Raoufa Khattab has refused to believe that
her son Abd al-Rahman is dead until she sees his remains with her
own eyes.</p>
<p>“They haven’t returned his body to us, so perhaps he’s alive,
perhaps he’s in jail,” she keeps telling Ahmad, another son.</p>
<p>Ahmad was only 13 when his brother Abd al-Rahman was killed in
April 1979 during an armed confrontation with Israeli forces near
Bisan, a town located in the north of present-day Israel.</p>
<p>Abd al-Rahman led a small group of resistance fighters who tried
to carry out an attack against an Israeli military post in the
area.</p>
<p>After his killing, his body was transferred to one of Israel’s
“cemeteries of numbers,” where Palestinian combatants are <a
href="http://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/politics/2014/11/28/cemeteries-of-numbers-israel-takes-revenge-on-palestinian-corpses">buried
in secret</a> and are identified only by numbers etched on metal
plates. Israel has designated these cemeteries as <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/closed-military-zones">closed
military zones</a>.</p>
<p>With every prisoner exchange between Israel and Palestinian
resistance groups, Abd al-Rahman’s mother would wait for him to be
released as if she was waiting for a living man to get out of
jail.</p>
<p>“Through all those years, she has never forgotten him,” Ahmad
told The Electronic Intifada. “And now that she has gotten older
and her health has significantly deteriorated, the very mention of
him aggravates her suffering.”</p>
<p>When television stations came to interview Raoufa in the occupied
West Bank village of <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/bilin">Bilin</a> in
2014, she suffered a mental breakdown and had to remain in bed for
two weeks.</p>
<h2>“Honor his memory”</h2>
<p>If Israel’s aim of burying Palestinian fighters in cemeteries of
numbers was to drive their legacy into oblivion, it has largely
failed.</p>
<p>Wassim al-Abed only knew his uncle Abd al-Fattah Rimawi from
photographs. He was not yet born when his uncle was believed to
have been killed in 1969. Rimawi, better known by his nom du
guerre Abu Marmar, was a commander of the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/plo">Palestine
Liberation Organization’s</a> Assifa Brigades.</p>
<p>A refugee living in <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/jordan">Jordan</a>, he
was among the first Palestinian paratroopers and secretly returned
to Palestine several times to carry out resistance operations. He
is believed to be buried in the cemetery of numbers but his family
has not been able to confirm that — or whether he is alive or
dead.</p>
<p>Abu Marmar’s mother and most of his siblings have died; al-Abed,
37, has taken on the responsibility of finding and burying his
uncle’s body.</p>
<p>“Returning his body and burying it in a known place in his
hometown of Beit Rima is the least we could do to honor his
memory,” al-Abed told The Electronic Intifada, referring to a
village north of the West Bank city of <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/ramallah">Ramallah</a>.</p>
<p>“He has sacrificed greatly for the Palestinian revolution and he
deserves to be buried in dignity. Even if there is very little
left of his remains, returning his body carries a massive symbolic
weight,” al-Abed added.</p>
<p>While martyrs like Abu Marmar have never been forgotten by their
families, it is only in recent years that the issue of missing
bodies and bodies buried in the cemeteries of numbers been
revived.</p>
<p>In August 2008, the Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center
launched a <a
href="http://www.jlac.ps/index.php?page=inside&pid=24§ionid=4&parentId=0">national
campaign</a> to return the bodies in cooperation with martyrs’
families. The campaign sought to reclaim the bodies of martyrs
both through legal channels and public and international pressure.</p>
<h2>Painful</h2>
<p>No less important, however, was that the campaign shed light on
some of the most notorious crimes of the Israeli occupation.</p>
<p>“Since its establishment, the campaign has published two books
that include the names, stories and details of the martyrs whose
bodies are still detained by Israel in addition to information
about the cemeteries of numbers,” Salwa Hammad, a spokesperson for
the center, told The Electronic Intifada.</p>
<p>She explained that the campaign holds a national day of action to
demand the return of martyrs’ bodies. It also organizes workshops
for families and encourages them to tell their stories.</p>
<p>According to the center’s data, the number of martyrs who are
buried in the cemeteries of numbers had reached 268 by September
this year, in addition to 19 who were killed in the 2014 attack on
Gaza.</p>
<p>“The issue of the detained bodies from Gaza is particularly
painful because not only did the Israeli army commit an atrocious
massacre there, killing more than 2,000 people, but it also
kidnapped bodies and [has] never returned them to be buried in
Gaza,” Hammad said.</p>
<p>Israel has recently <a
href="http://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/Israel-wont-return-bodies-of-dead-Palestinian-assailants-423911">stated</a>
that the bodies of Palestinians accused of attacks against
Israelis will not be returned to their families.</p>
<p>Israel is still refusing to hand over the bodies of at least 20
Palestinians killed between 8 October and 29 October. They include
10 from the Jerusalem area and 10 from <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/hebron">Hebron</a>.</p>
<p>Hebron has — so far — witnessed the largest protest to demand the
return of martyrs’ bodies.</p>
<p>Thousands <a
href="http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=768506">took to
the streets there</a> last week to demand that Israel hand over
the bodies of slain Palestinians.</p>
<p>“Israel’s detention of the bodies is not just a form of
collective punishment for the families, it’s also an attempt to
conceal evidence of the summary execution that it carries out
against those youth, preventing Palestinians from conducting
autopsies,” Amin al-Bayed, the Hebron coordinator for the campaign
to return martyrs’ bodies, told The Electronic Intifada.</p>
<p>Following the protest in Hebron, Israel agreed to release some of
the bodies.</p>
<p>Two bodies of people from the Hebron area were returned to their
families on Sunday morning.</p>
<p>Israel refused to hand over five other bodies after families
rejected a condition that they be buried at midnight, according to
sources in Hebron.</p>
<h2>“Bring Bayan home”</h2>
<p>Five other bodies were <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/israelis-execute-injured-palestinian-video-and-eyewitness/14966">received</a>
in Hebron on Friday evening.</p>
<p>The remains belonged to five Palestinian teenagers, including
that of <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/bayan-al-esseili">Bayan
al-Esseili</a>, a teenaged schoolgirl <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/video-did-israeli-soldier-plant-knife-teen-killed-settler">executed</a>
by Israeli forces on 17 October.</p>
<p>Ayman al-Esseili spoke to The Electronic Intifada a day before
receiving his daughter’s body.</p>
<p>“Words fail to express my pain. My beloved daughter, the closest
person in the world to me, was taken from me without being able to
see her corpse, touch her clothes or kiss her,” Ayman said.</p>
<p>“Ever since her killing, her mother has been demanding of me to
bring Bayan back home, somehow thinking that Bayan might still be
alive but the army is detaining her,” he said.</p>
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<p>“Her three-year-old brother, whom Bayan used to look after and
play with, asks me all the time about her,” Ayman added. “When I
tell him that Bayan has gone to heaven, he tells me that he, too,
wants to go to heaven to see her again. He is convinced that Bayan
is at her grandparents’ place and might be upset with him and so
has not returned yet.”</p>
<p>Bayan was a bright pupil who had hoped to study political science
and economics at university.</p>
<p>“She was the one who made me my morning coffee every day,” Ayman
said. “She did have a great impact on Palestinian society — but it
was not what we thought it would be. But I’m definitely proud of
her.”</p>
<p>“There is nothing harder than seeing pictures of your daughter’s
blood-soaked and bullet-ridden corpse on the mobile phones of
soldiers,” he said.</p>
<p>Ayman was detained after his daughter’s slaying; he said he was
beaten and interrogated. When he demanded to see Bayan’s corpse,
soldiers instead showed him a picture of her body after she had
been killed.</p>
<h2>Forced to wait</h2>
<p>Perhaps no one understands Bayan’s father better than Muhammad
al-Akhras. He was forced to wait for nearly 12 years before the
remains of his daughter were returned to him.</p>
<p>On the first day of every Eid, the annual Muslim festivals, the
cemetery of martyrs in <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/dheisheh-refugee-camp">Dheisheh
refugee camp</a> near the West Bank city of <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/bethlehem">Bethlehem</a>
is crowded with families visiting the graves of their loved ones.</p>
<p>Al-Akhras, however, could only dream of visiting his daughter’s
grave so that he could lay a wreath and shed the tears that he had
tried so resolutely to hold back.</p>
<p>His daughter Ayat, 17, blew herself up in a market in Jerusalem
in March 2002, killing a girl her same age and a security guard.</p>
<p>During that time, at the height of the second intifada, Dheisheh
had been subjected to daily raids and attacks by Israeli forces.</p>
<p>“When I finally received her remains in February 2014, it was
like saying that suspended goodbye that we did not have the chance
to utter,” Muhammad told The Electronic Intifada.</p>
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<p>Thousands attended Ayat’s funeral procession in February 2014,
Muhammad said. He added that since she was supposed to get married
just after graduating high school, her funeral was like a wedding
party.</p>
<p>Even though al-Akhras managed to reclaim his daughter’s remains,
he is still strongly committed to the cause of returning all
martyrs’ bodies. He has memorized the names of those in the
cemeteries of numbers.</p>
<p>He reads all the available information and regularly visits the
workshops that the campaign organizes. The 67-year-old can no
longer walk and uses a wheelchair, but his physical disability
hasn’t diminished his dedication to the cause.</p>
<p>“I wish I could go to Hebron and march with the families of
martyrs to demand the bodies of their martyrs,” he said. “It was
my indomitable faith that allowed me to handle Ayat’s loss and I
hope that all of them keep this faith and get to bury their
children.”</p>
<h2>Collective punishment</h2>
<p>Detaining the bodies of Palestinian martyrs and later burying
them in secret cemeteries is designed to achieve multiple
purposes. The policy imposes an additional punishment on the dead
and <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/collective-punishment">collective
punishment</a> on their families.</p>
<p>Martyrs’ bodies have also been <a
href="http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/07/palestine-israel-cemeteries-of-numbers-martyrs-burial.html">used</a>
as potential bargaining chips in prisoner exchange deals.</p>
<p>The policy also has more existential implications.</p>
<p>But by withholding the bodies, Israel is targeting the collective
Palestinian memory and dehumanizing those living under its
colonial rule who dare to challenge its occupation.</p>
<p>In her book, <em><a
href="http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/law/human-rights/security-theology-surveillance-and-politics-fear">Security
Theology, Surveillance and the Politics of Fear</a></em>, the
Palestinian scholar Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian argues that “the
occupying colonial power does not only control and expropriate the
living, but also the dead and sites of Palestinian burial.”</p>
<p>“Israel is still reading and writing the power of the dead as a
security threat,” she adds.</p>
<p>Every martyr’s funeral is likely to turn into a mass protest —
and Israel is fully aware of that.</p>
<p>In Jerusalem, Israel decides when Palestinians can obtain the
bodies of their dead, where they can bury them and the number of
people allowed at the funerals. Israel has even ordered families
to hand over money to collect the bodies of their loved ones.</p>
<p><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/fadi-alloun">Fadi
Alloun</a>, 19, was <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/israel-tore-fadi-allouns-family-apart-then-it-killed-him/14900">shot
and killed</a> by Israeli police near Jerusalem’s Old City on 4
October.</p>
<p>His family was forced to bury him on 12 October in his Jerusalem
neighborhood of <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/issawiyeh">Issawiyeh</a>
rather than in a family plot closer to the Old City. Alloun’s body
was only handed over to the family before dawn on the day of the
funeral — after more than a week of delay.</p>
<h2>Defiance</h2>
<p>Israel uses such tactics to try and break Palestinians’ spirits,
but they have the opposite effect. Instead of crushing people,
Israel’s policies of punishment and control increase social
cohesion, communal solidarity and defiance.</p>
<p>Qassim Badran from Kufr Aqab, near Jerusalem, grieved the death
of his 16-year-old son Ishaq, who was <a
href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/ishaq-badran-sixteen-year-old-palestinian-terrorist-killed-after-stabbing-an-israeli-in-east-a6690096.html">killed</a>
by Israeli forces in the Old City earlier this month after an
alleged stabbing attempt. Following his son’s killing, Badran was
threatened with <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/home-demolitions">home
demolition</a> and the revocation of his Jerusalem residency as
his village is located behind the massive wall Israel is building
in the West Bank. His son’s body has not yet been returned to him.</p>
<p>“I have also been subjected to an economic war — my bank account
was frozen due to an old tax issue that dates back 12 years and
Israeli authorities [have] issued a travel ban against me,” he
told The Electronic Intifada.</p>
<p>“It was my son’s own decision to respond to Israel’s ongoing
crimes and his decision alone, but I will never disown him or
blame him for what he did,” Badran added.</p>
<p>Like all other parents from Jerusalem, Badran reiterated that he
will never agree to receive the body of his child unless all
Jerusalem families are able to reclaim the bodies of their
children.</p>
<p>“We are completely unified,” he explained. “I will treat the son
of Jabal al-Mukabir [a neighborhood in East Jerusalem] as if he
were my own.”</p>
<p>So far, families awaiting the return of loved ones’ bodies have
decided against submitting a petition to the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/israeli-high-court">Israeli
high court</a>. The families fear that the court will reject
their case.</p>
<p>And they do not have much trust in Israel’s judicial system.</p>
<p>An Israeli public prosecutor last week rejected a request
submitted by a number of families, according to Rami Saleh, head
of the Jerusalem-based branch of the legal aid center.</p>
<p>During a <a href="https://maannews.net/Content.aspx?id=806428">press
conference</a> in Ramallah last week, martyrs’ families stated
that they will not allow Israel to exploit their need to reclaim
the bodies as a means of breaking their spirits.</p>
<p>Lawyer Muhammad Alayan, father of <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/how-scout-leader-became-martyr/14943">Bahaa
Alayan</a>, shot dead by Israeli police last month, vowed to
keep on campaigning.</p>
<p>“Every inch of this soil is Palestinian,” Muhammad said. “And
wherever my son will be buried, I know that he will be on
Palestinian land.”</p>
<p><em>Budour Youssef Hassan is a Palestinian writer and law
graduate based in occupied Jerusalem. Blog: <a
href="https://budourhassan.wordpress.com/">budourhassan.wordpress.com</a>.
Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/Budour48">@Budour48</a> </em></p>
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