Photo courtesy of Anadolu
Palestinian groups marked the National Day for Recovery of the Bodies of Palestinian and Arab Martyrs amid renewed calls for Israel to return the remains of Palestinians held in military morgues and closed cemeteries.
The Palestinian National Campaign for the Retrieval of Martyrs’ Bodies and prisoners’ institutions said they had documented the identities of 799 Palestinians whose bodies are being held by Israel.
The groups said the figure included 81 children, 10 women and 99 Palestinians who died in Israeli custody. Another 256 bodies were said to be buried in so-called “graves of numbers,” closed military cemeteries where graves are identified by numbers rather than names.
The Palestinian Cabinet designated Aug. 27 as a national observance in 2008 to support legal and public efforts to determine the fate of missing Palestinians and secure the return of bodies to their families for burial.
The documented Palestinian tally is lower than an Israeli estimate cited by Haaretz on Aug. 11, which said Israel was holding around 1,700 Palestinian bodies, most of them from Gaza, for possible use in future exchange negotiations.
Israel has expanded its policy of retaining Palestinian bodies over the past decade. Its security Cabinet approved holding some remains for negotiations in 2017, while the Israeli Supreme Court in 2019 upheld the military’s authority to retain bodies under emergency regulations.
International humanitarian law requires parties to armed conflict to respect the dead and facilitate the return of remains when possible. Article 34 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions also calls for respect for remains and efforts to return them to families.
The issue has widened since the Gaza war began in October 2023, with hundreds of bodies transferred from Gaza while thousands remain missing. Palestinian groups said 930 bodies and 66 boxes containing human remains had been returned to Gaza as of Feb. 4, 2026, while identification efforts remained difficult because of limited forensic resources.