The Palestinian Center for Missing and Forcibly Disappeared affirms that the recent revelations published by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz—exposing the holding of nearly 1,700 bodies of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip by Israeli authorities for use as future bargaining chips—constitute damning evidence and a systematic extension of the crime of enforced disappearance, as well as a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law.
The Center emphasizes that this admission reflects merely a fraction of a far deeper and more complex reality surrounding the issue of missing persons in the Strip. According to the Center’s estimates, approximately 2,000 individuals have been forcibly disappeared, with all trace of them completely lost during the war on the Gaza Strip.
This crisis has escalated as thousands vanished during military operations, while attempting to reach humanitarian aid assembly points, or within areas under direct Israeli control throughout the conflict. The fate of these missing individuals remains split between unacknowledged detention and death, with their bodies held inside Israeli facilities amidst prolonged official secrecy and deliberate withholding of information. This refusal to disclose data severely compounds the anguish of hundreds of families enduring a prolonged state of loss and uncertainty.
Underscoring the systematic nature of this policy of concealment, the Center notes that since the ceasefire took effect in the Gaza Strip, Israeli authorities have returned approximately 480 bodies in separate batches. However, health authorities were forced to bury 377 of them unidentified.
Identification was rendered impossible due to the absolute refusal of Israeli authorities to attach any personal data or belongings, medical reports clarifying their health status prior to death, detention locations, or even the dates of death. Furthermore, health officials in Gaza reported receiving the bodies in severely degraded conditions due to mutilation and improper storage, further complicating identification efforts.
The Center stresses that holding bodies, desecrating or mishandling them, and withholding information about them represent grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, their Additional Protocols, and customary international law—all of which guarantee the right of families to know the fate of their relatives and obligate parties to a conflict to search for the dead, treat their remains with respect, and facilitate their return. Moreover, using human remains as leverage is a clear form of collective punishment, prohibited under Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and constitutes an outrage upon personal dignity amounting to a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
In light of this, the Palestinian Center for Missing and Forcibly Disappeared calls upon the international community and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to intervene immediately and exert effective pressure to compel Israeli authorities to disclose full lists of detainees and held bodies, along with their locations. The Center further demands that medical and legal teams be granted immediate access to legally document identities, and calls for the prompt, unconditional release of all bodies so they may be buried with dignity in accordance with international law and human rights standards.
