Why is Israel holding hundreds of Palestinian bodies, Haaretz exposes
Israel is holding the bodies of hundreds of deceased Palestinians, nearly 1,700, for bargaining purposes for potential use in future exchange deals, even though there are currently no Israelis being held captives by the Palestinian resistance.
Occupied Palestine: Israel is holding the bodies of hundreds of deceased Palestinians, nearly 1,700, for bargaining purposes for potential use in future exchange deals, even though there are currently no Israelis being held captives by the Palestinian resistance.
Shin Bet security service chief David Zini argues that Israel must keep these remains as bargaining chips for future exchange deals, local daily Haaretz reported Monday.
Jurists say that in the absence of a resolution passed by Israel’s cabinet on the issue, the state has no authority to hold the bodies of Palestinian noncombatants, Haaretz added, citing two sources familiar with the matter.
Previous resolutions linked the holding of bodies to Israeli captives negotiations, and no resolution has been discussed since the return of the body of the last Israeli captive from the Gaza Strip in January.
The bodies are held in freezers in military facilities, but several defense officials say some remains have not been identified and the location of others is unknown. This is the case of Raj’a Samur, a 46-year-old resident of Gaza who before the Israeli genocidal war began in October 2023 had an Israeli work permit.
When the assault erupted, he and some 4,000 other Gazans were placed in military detention facilities. He was first taken to Ofer Prison and then to a facility at the Israeli military base in Anata.
After Samur, a diabetic, died at Anata, the military police opened an investigation. His family petitioned the Supreme Court, demanding that his body be released to them. A body identified by the military rabbinate as Samur’s was brought to Tel Aviv’s National Institute of Forensic Medicine, but it was found to have bullet wounds; Samur had not been shot. The Israeli military and the State Prosecutor’s Office had to admit that they didn’t know where Samur’s body was, according to Haaretz.
In October 2025, the Palestinian National Campaign for the Retrieval of Martyrs’ Bodies and Disclosure of the Fate of the Missing said Israel was holding around 1,500 bodies of Palestinians from Gaza at the Sde Teiman military facility in southern Israel. The base has been used by Israel as a detention center, where a number of case of abuse of Palestinian detainees had been reported during the Gaza genocide.
Israel has long maintained a policy of withholding the bodies of Palestinians. Israeli forces routinely kill Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip and seize their bodies.
Several human rights groups have repeatedly condemned Israel’s long-standing policy of withholding Palestinian bodies, calling for their immediate release and return to families.
Under Israeli law, the retention of Palestinian bodies is permitted and has been implemented across the occupied Palestinian territory.
However, international humanitarian law explicitly prohibits the withholding of bodies. It states that the dead must be treated with dignity, “honourably buried” and “if possible according to the rites of the religion to which they belonged”.
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