Israel has kept the remains of more than a hundred Palestinians who were killed by its forces or died in its prisons, including that of freedom fighter Nasser Abu Hmeid.
The flag of Palestine. (Makbula Nassar, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
Palestinians staged marches across the occupied territories on Tuesday, demanding that Israel release the bodies of deceased Palestinian freedom fighter Nasser Abu Hmeid and others killed by its forces.
Protesters in the occupied West Bank marched from Amari refugee camp near Ramallah to the Qalandia checkpoint. Israeli forces used heavy force to disperse the protesters once they arrived at the checkpoint. According to Palestinian Red Crescent, at least 11 Palestinians were injured in the attack carried out by Israeli security forces.
Israeli forces today quelled a march demanding the release of #Palestinians’ bodies withheld from burial at Qalandiya checkpoint, north of Jerusalem, injuring 11 Palestinians.https://t.co/6kzSj5Hm9P pic.twitter.com/ktSzWD5JFi
— Wafa News Agency – English (@WAFANewsEnglish) December 27, 2022
Similar protests were carried out between the Red Cross office and the U.N. headquarters in the occupied Gaza strip. Protesters carried symbolic coffins adorned with photographs of Hmeid.
#Palestinians demand Israeli authorities release the bodies of dead #prisoners.
Protests erupted after Israel refused to release the body of #NasserAbuHamid, who died from cancer in Israeli prison.#Israel is accused of ‘intentional medical negligence’ leading to his death. pic.twitter.com/hlnuSluagA
— In Context (@incontextmedia) December 27, 2022
Protesters shouted slogans denouncing Israel and its policy of depriving family members of the bodies of deceased Palestinians, preventing them from properly mourning their loved ones or saying farewell. The protest in the occupied West Bank was also attended by Hmeid’s mother, who addressed the gathering and condemned Israel’s policy. She and others demanded that the bodies of all Palestinians withheld by Israel be released.
Mother of Nasser Abu Hmeid, who died in Israeli jails after a long term of Israeli medical negligence, demanded the Israeli occupation to hand over her son's body, saying: "I want to hug my son's body and bury him in the homeland which he sacrificed himself for" pic.twitter.com/R0DFk0FDgI
— Chris Hutchinson (@ChrisHu34451470) December 28, 2022
Israel has kept 118 bodies of Palestinians who died since 2015. This includes the bodies of 11 Palestinian prisoners, including that of Hmeid. Israel has pursued this policy since 1967 and has buried over 200 Palestinians inside numbered graves as well.
A march of hundreds of Palestinians that started today at Amari refugee camp heading to Qalandia checkpoint, south of Ramallah, demanding Israel releases bodies of Palestinians killed and withheld by its forces.
Credit: Wafa News Agency pic.twitter.com/VjRWwLmwbz
— Wafa News Agency – English (@WAFANewsEnglish) December 27, 2022
Human rights activists have called the policy a form of “collective punishment.” They also claim that Israel often uses the bodies as a “bargaining chip,” exchanging them for Israeli soldiers captured by Hamas. The practice has been sanctioned within Israel by a law passed by the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, in 2018.
Apartheid Israel is refusing to return the body of Palestinian political prisoner, Nasser Abu Hmeid, who died as a result of Israeli medical negligence.
Israel is holding Nasser's body as a "bargaining chip". Even in death Palestinians remain colonized.#FreeThemAll pic.twitter.com/nNLJWQ1wXI
— BDS movement (@BDSmovement) December 21, 2022
Nasser Abu Hmeid, 50, died last week in an Israeli hospital after suffering from cancer for over a year. He had been in Israeli prison since 2002. He was diagnosed with cancer in October 2021, but Israeli authorities refused to release him on medical grounds. Palestinians have accused Israeli authorities of killing him by deliberately denying him necessary medical care and keeping him in prison despite visible signs of illness, which ultimately led to his death.
This article is from Peoples Dispatch.
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Never can decide which country I detest most, Israel or the United States. I’ve gone back and forth for years. I think I’ll settle on equally.
What the unceasing decades long escalation in terrorizing of the indigenous Palestinian Arab people, by Israeli’s, has shown to the world, is the despicable depths of unmitigated live evil they are prepared to sink to in order to unilaterally have their way.
It is the ‘demon’stration of their heartless lack of compassion for ‘others’!!! If this is not the identical heartlessness that was inculcated into the German population during the Nazi era, then so-called humanity definitely does not reason rationally!
Past history tells this truth, over and over again, in no uncertain terms… without having to resort to the present madness taking place in Europe, as yet another example.
Again, this was all foretold in 1948. Essentially, Jews invaded Palestine and the world, aghast at the horror of the Holocaust, gave them a free pass to commit atrocities against the indigenous people there. The reportedly six million who died in the tragedy of WWII, though a tragedy in itself, was but a fraction of the 50+ million lives that were lost. Yet, Holocaust museums have sprouted up all over the world to commemorate the deaths of only the six million. Paradoxically, the other 44+ million lie in graves unmarked by the world.
Some dudes go to Africa practicing safari, israHellis don’t have to go that far…they have right under their feet human safari
I wonder if the apartheid regime of israel can stoop any lower than this despicable act.
I think they can and they will. Decent people can not even think of the atrocities that evil people are capable of.