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Families ‘inconsolable’ in Gaza as Israel returns more unidentified bodies
Employees of Gaza's Nasser Medical Complex unload bodies of Palestinian prisoners in Khan Younis, southern Gaza
Israel has returned dozens of Palestinian bodies and human remains to Gaza without providing any information about their identities or how they were killed, according to Palestinian medical officials.
The remains arrived at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on Wednesday in plain white bags and are now being examined by forensic teams in an effort to identify them and provide answers to grieving families.
“The bags carry the weight of lives lost. Now they’re undergoing examination, prolonging the grief of families desperate for closure,” Al Jazeera’s Ibrahim al-Khalili reported from al-Shifa Hospital on Saturday.
Palestinian medics say several bodies were mutilated.
“The International Committee of the Red Cross handed over 120 body bags containing 54 bodies as well as skull samples placed in 66 separate bags,” forensic official Omar Suleiman told Al Jazeera.
Previous exchanges of Palestinian prisoners’ bodies have revealed extensive signs of abuse, with many showing indications of torture, mutilation and execution.
In November, the rights group Physicians for Human Rights-Israel released a report saying at least 94 Palestinian detainees have died in Israeli custody, citing causes including torture, medical neglect, malnutrition and physical assault.
The group said the actual toll could be significantly higher.
Hamas leader rejects disarmament while Israeli occupation of Gaza continues
Hamas’s political leader abroad, Khaled Meshaal, has rejected calls to disarm Palestinian factions in Gaza, arguing that stripping weapons from an occupied people would turn them into “an easy victim to be eliminated”.
Speaking on the second day of the Al Jazeera Forum in Doha on Sunday, Meshaal described the discussion around Hamas handing over its weapons as a continuation of a century-long effort to neutralise Palestinian armed resistance.
“In the context that our people are still under occupation, talking about disarmament is an attempt to make our people an easy victim to be eliminated and easily exterminated by Israel, which is armed with all international weaponry,” he said.
“If we want to talk about it … it is necessary to provide an environment that allows reconstruction and relief and ensures that the war does not reignite between Gaza and the Zionist entity. This is a logical approach, and Hamas — through mediators Qatar, Turkiye and Egypt, and through indirect dialogues with the Americans via the mediators — has reached, or there has been, an understanding of Hamas’s vision on that. Yes, this is something that requires great effort, not an approach of disarmament.”
“The problem is not that Hamas and the resistance forces in Gaza provide guarantees; the problem is Israel, which wants to take the Palestinian weapons … and put them in the hands of militias to create chaos,” he said.
Meshaal pointed to Hamas’s proposals for an extended calm as an alternative to dismantling its military wing.
“Hamas proposed a truce of five to seven to 10 years. This is a guarantee that these weapons are not used,” he said, adding that the mediating nations, who have a “deep relationship with Hamas, can form a guarantee”.
Meshaal pointed out that if people were to go back to the origin of the conflict, the issue is one of “occupation and a people resisting occupation, with the right to self-determination and independence”. “Resistance is a right for people under occupation; it is part of international law and the heavenly religions. Resistance is part of the memory of nations,” he added.
