As the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas continues to hold, Hamas has handed over the bodies of four Israeli captives, including members of the Bibas family, while Israel continues to withhold Palestinian bodies.
Oded Lifshitz, a journalist and peace activist, and Shiri Bibas and her two children Ariel and Kfir Bibas, were killed by the occupation aircraft in November 2023.
“All of them were alive before the Zionist occupation aircraft deliberately bombed the locations where they were being held,” said Abu Obeida, spokesperson of Al-Qassam Brigades in a statement.
“The Al-Qassam Brigades and the resistance did everything in their power to protect the prisoners and preserve their lives, but the barbaric and continuous bombing by the occupation prevented them from being able to save all the prisoners”, said Hamas in a statement.
“To the families of Bibas and Lifshitz: We would have preferred your sons to return to you alive, but your army and government leaders chose to kill them instead of bringing them back,” reads the statement.
Earlier, Al-Qassam Brigades released a video of her husband Yarden Bibas, who was freed last week as part of the ongoing captives and prisoner exchanges, in which he says, “Netanyahu, you bombed and killed my wife and my two children, who were the most important things in my life. Bring them back home so they can be buried in Israel. I beg you to bring me, my wife, and my children back home.”
The bodies are scheduled to be released today in Gaza’s Khan Younis- a central site for Israeli ground forces during military operations, under the international supervision of regional mediators and the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Al-Qassam Brigades set up a banner on the handover stage reading, “War criminal Netanyahu and his army killed them with missiles warplanes”.
Meanwhile, the Israeli occupation continues to keep its policy of withholding Palestinian dead bodies.
According to the National Campaign for Retrieval of the Bodies, Israel holds 665 martyrs’ bodies in the “cemeteries of numbers” and occupation morgues, some dating back to the 1960s and 1970s, with the latest being the martyrs of Al-Faraa camp, who were killed this evening.
This includes the body of Nasser Abu Hamid, who was arrested for resisting the occupation and died after relentless torture in jail and medical negligence.
Since the beginning of the aggression in October 2023, a total of 259 martyrs’ bodies have been held, including 198 killed in 2024 alone.
These numbers do not include the martyrs whose bodies are being held from the Gaza Strip, as there is no accurate information about their numbers.
The dead were buried in what Israel refers to as “cemeteries for enemy combatants,” mass clandestine graves located in areas designated as closed military zones.
According to figures compiled by the Jerusalem Legal Aid Center (JLAC), Israel continues to hold the remains of 253 Arab and Palestinian war victims in these cemeteries while also refusing to acknowledge the fate of a further 68 who are missing.
Israel’s ongoing refusal to undertake the necessary process to identify those buried in the cemeteries of numbers violates United Nations Security Council Resolution 2474, which called upon parties to armed conflict to take all appropriate measures, to actively search for persons reported missing, to enable the return of their remains and to account for persons reported missing “without adverse distinction”.
Among the 665 bodies, 59 are of child martyrs under the age of 18, though the resolution emphasizes paying the utmost attention to cases of children reported missing, and registering and notifying the personal details of persons deprived of their liberty, including prisoners of war.
In addition to those languishing in the cemeteries of numbers, Israel has been holding captive the corpses of 51 Palestinians since 2016 under the pretext of using them as bargaining chips in a potential prisoner swap deal with Hamas.
Despite all this, during the genocide on Gaza, Israeli army has confiscated of dozens of dead bodies from Al-Shifa Medical Complex and the Indonesian Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip, and others from the vicinity of the so-called “safe corridor” (Salah al-Din Road) designated for displaced people heading to the central and southern parts of the Strip, according to a Euro-Med Monitor report.
According to Euro-Med Monitor, the Israeli army also dug up and confiscated the bodies from a mass grave that was established more than 10 days ago in one of the Al-Shifa Medical Complex’s courtyards.
