Gaza families await fate of loved ones as Israel returns batch of unidentified bodies

Israeli forces accused of exhuming Palestinians and desecrating graveyards

Bodies of Palestinians released by Israel are prepared for a mass funeral in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip in March. AFP

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Um Mohammed Ftiha sits at the morgue in Nasser Medical Complex in the southern Gaza Strip waiting for photos of bodies to arrive, torn between the hope that her two missing sons are not among them and the eagerness to find out any news about them.

“I am waiting. Those responsible told me yesterday to come this morning and they will show me photos. Maybe I can find my sons,” she told The National.

Her sons Mohammed and Ibrahim left Deir Al Balah on July 12 in search of work elsewhere in Gaza after she and her six other children had been forced to flee several times.

"I hope they have been arrested – not killed. I can't do anything until I know something about them," she said.

Israel returned 89 bodies on Monday through the Karam Abu Salem border crossing, wrapped in blue bags with no name tags, only a number that Israeli forces had written on them.

Um Mohammed said she would be able to recognise Mohammed from his large black watch and olive t-shirt, and Ibrahim from a scar on his left hand, his jeans and black T-shirt.

“I can’t continue my life, after my sons my life doesn’t have meaning," she said.

Another Palestinian mother said she is looking for the remains of her two sons, aged 31 and 34.

"My heart has been on fire since they were martyred," she said. "I have not found their bodies. I do not sleep at night while I wait to find their bodies. I have gone crazy searching for them."

It is not known whether these bodies returned from Israel belong to people who have died in Israeli custody, or whether they were exhumed from Palestinian graves by Israeli forces searching for the remains of hostages taken by Hamas on October 7.

They came back as "skeletons or decomposed corpses", Palestinian medical and civil defence officials said.

"We were unable to identify many of the bodies because of their condition. The occupation did not protect in accordance with the proper procedure for dealing with dead bodies," civil defence official Dr Mohammad Al Moghayer told The National.

In some instances, several bodies were placed together in one shroud, he said.

"Thirteen were place in one shroud and 22 in another," and the rest in separate shrouds.

Taking the bodies from their graves and moving them to unknown places "is considered a crime against humanity and is punishable by international law", Mr Al Moghayer added.

Authorities in Gaza believe more than 2,000 people have been removed from their graves by Israeli forces, after dozens of cemeteries across the strip were desecrated by bulldozers and military vehicles.

Hamas has described Israel's return of unidentified bodies as evidence of the "occupation's sadism".

"This compounds the suffering of martyrs' families, or those who have loved ones who have gone missing, by denying them the ability to bury them in a way befitting to them," the Palestinian group said in a statement.

A Gaza government media office statement on Tuesday said Israeli forces had dug up graves in Khan Younis, Jabalia and the Tuffah neighbourhood, from which they "stole bodies". The military continues to hold "dozens of bodies", it added.

So far, Israeli forces have returned more than 400 bodies to Gaza since November.