Ramallah -

Not only did the Israeli occupation kill 16 years of motherhood and the flood of tenderness, but the Palestinian mother, a severe struggle, denied the right to look at the body of her martyr son Haitham, who killed him with bullets, and has hidden his body since the eighth of last September.

Umm Haitham barely got over the shock of the news of the killing of her only son, but her wound deepens with each passing day without the location and fate of his body being determined or a farewell look on his body, due to his continued detention, like dozens of other martyrs.

The martyr Haitham Shadid, the occupation continues to hold his body since September 8, 2022 (communication sites)

Continuous campaign

In early November, the mothers of a number of martyrs launched an ongoing campaign under the slogan "Mothers' Cry", which includes popular events, sit-ins and sit-ins in various Palestinian cities, with the aim of delivering their message to the world and pressuring the occupation to release the detained bodies, according to what Ms. Shadid said. Al Jazeera Net.

Umm Haitham says that all legal and political doors are closed, and she did not find any benefit in returning the bodies of the martyrs after the occupation decided to detain them for the purpose of bargaining.

And she added, "We will continue to raise our voice until the bodies of our children return to us, and we give them a farewell look and bury them according to Islamic law, and in known graves, so that we can visit them and read Surat Al-Fatihah on their souls."

Under the title "Mothers' Cry", a nationwide event to demand the return of the bodies.

pic.twitter.com/xhUCcMdmTD

— Jmedia (@Jmediaps) November 1, 2022

They killed him twice

And in the south of the West Bank, my father, an employee of the Hebron Court of First Instance, is still in pain, whose profession of distributing court notices led him to the city center, where soldiers and settlers were stationed.

There, on March 12, 2019, was the end of Yasser Al-Shweiki, according to what was announced by the occupation, which monopolizes the information and details of the event, claiming that the martyr tried to carry out a stabbing operation without any evidence, according to his family.

The elderly woman, Umm Tayseer, still hopes that the kidnapped body will be returned, "so that our hearts may be reassured and the body may be honored by burying it in accordance with Islamic law."

Um Tayseer is keen to participate in the "Mothers' Cry" activities, hoping that her voice will reach decision-makers in the region and the world.

"Our son was killed twice, the first when they shot him during his work, and the second when his body was kidnapped to an unknown location," Yasser's mother added to Al-Jazeera Net.

And with the continued withholding of information and the detention of the body, the martyr's mother says, "Despite the passage of years since his killing, he did not leave my imagination, and with his continued detention, fire ignites in our chests, and the flames of the refrigerator still burn us."

The parents of the martyr Yasser Al-Shweiki hold his picture and hope for the release of his body (Al-Jazeera)

Fear of organ theft

For his part, the father of the martyr Yasser, Hajj Fawzi Al-Shweiki, who is a veteran of the Palestinian journalists, says that the fate of his son is still unknown to him.

He added, "We were not summoned to identify him, and we do not know his fate until this moment, except that we were informed through the media and the Civil Liaison (the official contact with Israel) that he was martyred, and they did not tell us where he was kidnapped."

Al-Shweiki fears that the occupation authorities have stolen some of his body parts to use them in illegal ways and goals.

The parents of the martyr Yasser demand that the body be returned to them, his family, and his children, "so that he may have a funeral worthy of his humanity, as it is a right guaranteed by all laws and laws."

In support of the mothers of the martyrs, prisoner Samer Al-Issawi embarked on an open hunger strike 17 days ago (until November 14), for which he was punished by solitary confinement.

Al-Issawi is from the city of Jerusalem and was released as part of the Wafaa Al-Ahrar deal in 2011. He previously went on hunger strike for more than 6 months, refusing his administrative detention, then the previous ruling was returned to him before the deal at the age of 30.

A prisoner beaten to free the bodies of the martyrs...


What kind of sacrifice is this, Samer?!

*Details are pictured on my page on Telegram due to limited space for posting here pic.twitter.com/ndXCxT9CmH

- Katia Nasser Katya Nasser (@ katyushia2) November 13, 2022

Refrigerators and tombs numbers

According to the national campaign to retrieve the bodies of the martyrs, Israel has been holding the bodies of 117 Palestinians in its refrigerators, since 2015, in addition to 256 bodies in the number graves.

Campaign spokesman Hussein Shujaia told Al-Jazeera Net that among the bodies held in the refrigerators were the bodies of two martyrs and 13 children.

The term “number cemetery” refers to cemeteries in which the bodies of Palestinians and Arabs killed by the Israeli army were buried in an unorganized manner, according to the numbers of their security files.

In the last two decades, Israeli media revealed some of these cemeteries in the Jordan Valley and northern Israel.

After years of judicial deliberations led by the Jerusalem Center, Israel released dozens of bodies in 2012, and dozens of others are still in detention, some of which the occupation authorities claimed not to have any information about them.

In 2019, the Israeli Supreme Court approved the detention of the bodies, to be used as a bargaining chip in the future, and to exchange them with Israeli prisoners held by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in the Gaza Strip since 2014.

Palestinian activists hold a poster of 11 Palestinian martyrs whose bodies are being held by the occupation (Al-Jazeera Net - Archive)

Bargain and medical experiences

Hajj Fawzi Al-Shweiki's fear of exploiting his son's body in medical experiments or trafficking in his organs was previously expressed by the Palestinian official level, and most of the families of the martyrs whose bodies are withheld are haunted by this.

In a cabinet session on July 4, Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh said that the occupation authorities "exacerbate the pain of the bereaved over the loss of their children by detaining their bodies."

He added, "We found that these bodies are used in the laboratories of medical schools in Israeli universities, in flagrant violation of human rights and scientific values, principles and ethics," without giving further details.

Shtayyeh called on international universities to boycott the Israeli universities involved in holding the bodies, and to put pressure on the occupation authorities to stop violating the bodies of the martyrs.

A symbolic funeral at Birzeit University for the student martyr Amer Badr, whose body the occupation is holding.# We want our children 📸


Hudifa Sorour pic.twitter.com/ELDElgMpd9

- We want our children (@makaberalarqa) November 5, 2022

Theft and trafficking

Prior to that, the Palestinian Ministry of Information issued a special report in April, expressly titled "The bodies of martyrs detained by the occupation authorities between theft, trafficking and concealment."

The ministry reviewed previous press reports and investigations that talked about Israel stealing and trading in the organs of Palestinian martyrs.

She referred to the book "On Their Dead Bodies" by the Israeli doctor and expert in anthropology, Meira Weiss, published in 2014, in which she mentioned that between 1996 and 2002 she was in the Abu Kabir Institute for Forensic Medicine in Tel Aviv to conduct scientific research, and there she saw how she was Organs are stolen, especially from the dead bodies of Palestinians.

Weiss added, "During my stay at the institute, I saw how they were taking organs from a Palestinian body, and they did not take in return from the soldiers (...) They were taking corneas, skin, and heart valves."

The Ministry of Information concluded that the issue of detaining the bodies of the martyrs "is a humanitarian issue as well as an immoral occupational practice (...) that contradicts the rules for dealing with the bodies of war dead stipulated by international humanitarian law."

Due to the importance of the file of the detained bodies, the Palestinian government decided in 2008 that August 27 of each year be a national day for the recovery of the bodies of the martyrs, in which events are organized to remind them of their cause and the need to release their bodies.