Even in death, Palestinians are still denied dignity

To find Ran Gvili, Israel desecrated hundreds of Palestinian graves and the satellite did not care.

On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed what helium called an “extraordinary achievement”. Israeli forces retrieved the assemblage of Ran Gvili, an Israeli man, who died connected October 7, 2023, from a Palestinian graveyard successful bluish Gaza. Israeli TV showed Israeli soldiers singing a Hebrew opus astatine the site. Western media spoke astir the value of the cognition and this “moment of nationalist healing”.

Here successful Gaza, the Israeli cognition to retrieve the assemblage dispersed fear, symptom and death. Israeli soldiers killed 4 Palestinians adjacent the graveyard and desecrated hundreds of Palestinian graves. Hundreds of Palestinian families present person to hunt for and stitchery the remains of their loved ones, and 4 families person had to excavation caller graves.

What was presented to the remainder of the satellite arsenic a “standard subject operation”, was successful reality, a superior transgression nether planetary law. Grave desecration constitutes a usurpation of a cardinal proviso of the Geneva Convention, which stipulates that dormant bodies and graves indispensable beryllium respected.

In the Palestinian context, the onslaught connected cemeteries is yet different signifier of corporate punishment. It sends a wide message: that the Palestinian radical volition beryllium denied dignity adjacent successful death.

This is, of course, not the archetypal clip Israel has committed crimes against the Palestinian dead.

Throughout the war, Israel has been attacking, bulldozing and digging up graveyards crossed the Gaza Strip. By January 2024, CNN reported that astatine slightest 16 Palestinian cemeteries successful Gaza had been desecrated. Israel justified its actions by claiming that Hamas was utilizing the cemeteries for “military purposes”. Satellite imagery and footage revealed that full cemeteries were levelled, with Israeli troops converting immoderate into subject positions.

The excuse that Palestinian graveyards are desecrated lone retired of subject necessity does not hold, however. Palestinian burial sites successful the occupied West Bank are besides regularly attacked. Just earlier this month, Israeli civilians stormed a Muslim cemetery successful Jerusalem and destroyed graves. In January 2023, a Christian cemetery, wherever a batch of elder Christian leaders were buried, was besides defaced successful Jerusalem.

And it is not conscionable resting places for the dormant that Israel is ravaging. Even Palestinian dormant bodies themselves are a target. Last year, the Israeli service sent hundreds of bodies of Palestinians to Gaza. Many of them had wide signs of torture; others were truthful mutilated that they could not beryllium recognised, forcing the section authorities to hide them successful wide graves.

In different cases, the Israeli authorities person withheld Palestinian dormant bodies from their families arsenic yet different signifier of corporate punishment. Currently, Israel holds the bodies of Palestinians who died arsenic acold backmost arsenic the 1967 war. In 2019, the Israeli Supreme Court officially allowed the Israeli authorities to clasp bodies for the intent of “negotiations”.

All of this – the desecration, the exhumation, the mutilation, the withholding of dormant Palestinians and its legalisation – is meant to hitch retired the representation of the deceased and forestall their loved ones from mourning them and having closure. It is meant to punish; it is meant to humiliate. Even successful death, Palestinians cannot person information and peace.

All of these crimes against the Palestinian dormant person not received adjacent a fraction of the media attraction that the burial of the dormant Israeli captives released from Gaza did. The humanising stories, the extended photoshoots, the reports connected authoritative ceremonies were not afforded to Palestinian victims, whose bodies Israel has dug retired and desecrated.

There were nary reports connected the Palestinian families who went to the graveyard and experienced the fearfulness of seeing the remains of the graves of their loved ones scattered. There was nary planetary sympathy for their suffering and pain.

By now, we person seen and experienced each kinds of unimaginable crimes committed by Israel. What has made them that overmuch worse has been the planetary soundlessness astir them.

It is tragic that we should person to punctual the satellite that graves are ineffable and protected spaces nether planetary law, including Palestinian ones.

The views expressed successful this nonfiction are the author’s ain and bash not needfully bespeak Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.