Mother waits 36 years for Israel to return sons

body

Mourners carry the body of Amr al-Faqih during his funeral in Qatna village, west of Jerusalem, on 2
November, one day after his body was released by Israel. The youth was shot dead at an Israeli checkpoint
on 17 October.
Shadi HatemAPA images

The Electronic Intifada-Budour Youssef Hassan-2

November 2015
For the last 36 years, Raoufa Khattab has refused to believe that her son Abd al-Rahman is
dead until she sees his remains with her own eyes.
They havent returned his body to us, so perhaps hes alive, perhaps hes in jail, she keeps
telling Ahmad, another son.

Ahmad was only 13 when his brother Abd al-Rahman was killed in April 1979 during an
armed confrontation with Israeli forces near Bisan, a town located in the north of present-day
Israel.
Abd al-Rahman led a small group of resistance fighters who tried to carry out an attack
against an Israeli military post in the area.
After his killing, his body was transferred to one of Israels cemeteries of numbers, where
Palestinian combatants are buried in secret and are identified only by numbers etched on
metal plates. Israel has designated these cemeteries as closed military zones.
With every prisoner exchange between Israel and Palestinian resistance groups, Abd alRahmans mother would wait for him to be released as if she was waiting for a living man to
get out of jail.
Through all those years, she has never forgotten him, Ahmad told The Electronic Intifada.
And now that she has gotten older and her health has significantly deteriorated, the very
mention of him aggravates her suffering.
When television stations came to interview Raoufa in the occupied West Bank village
of Bilin in 2014, she suffered a mental breakdown and had to remain in bed for two weeks.

Honor his memory

If Israels aim of burying Palestinian fighters in cemeteries of numbers was to drive their
legacy into oblivion, it has largely failed.
Wassim al-Abed only knew his uncle Abd al-Fattah Rimawi from photographs. He was not yet
born when his uncle was believed to have been killed in 1969. Rimawi, better known by his
nom du guerre Abu Marmar, was a commander of the Palestine Liberation
Organizations Assifa Brigades.
A refugee living in Jordan, he was among the first Palestinian paratroopers and secretly
returned to Palestine several times to carry out resistance operations. He is believed to be
buried in the cemetery of numbers but his family has not been able to confirm that or
whether he is alive or dead.
Abu Marmars mother and most of his siblings have died; al-Abed, 37, has taken on the

responsibility of finding and burying his uncles body.

Returning his body and burying it in a known place in his hometown of Beit Rima is the least
we could do to honor his memory, al-Abed told The Electronic Intifada, referring to a village
north of the West Bank city ofRamallah.
He has sacrificed greatly for the Palestinian revolution and he deserves to be buried in
dignity. Even if there is very little left of his remains, returning his body carries a massive
symbolic weight, al-Abed added.
While martyrs like Abu Marmar have never been forgotten by their families, it is only in
recent years that the issue of missing bodies and bodies buried in the cemeteries of numbers
been revived.
In August 2008, the Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center launched a national
campaign to return the bodies in cooperation with martyrs families. The campaign sought to
reclaim the bodies of martyrs both through legal channels and public and international
pressure.
Painful

No less important, however, was that the campaign shed light on some of the most notorious
crimes of the Israeli occupation.
Since its establishment, the campaign has published two books that include the names,
stories and details of the martyrs whose bodies are still detained by Israel in addition to
information about the cemeteries of numbers, Salwa Hammad, a spokesperson for the
center, told The Electronic Intifada.
She explained that the campaign holds a national day of action to demand the return of
martyrs bodies. It also organizes workshops for families and encourages them to tell their
stories.
According to the centers data, the number of martyrs who are buried in the cemeteries of
numbers had reached 268 by September this year, in addition to 19 who were killed in the
2014 attack on Gaza.
The issue of the detained bodies from Gaza is particularly painful because not only did the
Israeli army commit an atrocious massacre there, killing more than 2,000 people, but it also

kidnapped bodies and [has] never returned them to be buried in Gaza, Hammad said.
Israel has recently stated that the bodies of Palestinians accused of attacks against Israelis will
not be returned to their families.
Israel is still refusing to hand over the bodies of at least 20 Palestinians killed between 8
October and 29 October. They include 10 from the Jerusalem area and 10 from Hebron.
Hebron has so far witnessed the largest protest to demand the return of martyrs bodies.
Thousands took to the streets there last week to demand that Israel hand over the bodies of
slain Palestinians.
Israels detention of the bodies is not just a form of collective punishment for the families, its
also an attempt to conceal evidence of the summary execution that it carries out against those
youth, preventing Palestinians from conducting autopsies, Amin al-Bayed, the Hebron
coordinator for the campaign to return martyrs bodies, told The Electronic Intifada.
Following the protest in Hebron, Israel agreed to release some of the bodies.
Two bodies of people from the Hebron area were returned to their families on Sunday
morning.
Israel refused to hand over five other bodies after families rejected a condition that they be
buried at midnight, according to sources in Hebron.

Bring Bayan home

Five other bodies were received in Hebron on Friday evening.
The remains belonged to five Palestinian teenagers, including that of Bayan al-Esseili, a
teenaged schoolgirlexecuted by Israeli forces on 17 October.
Ayman al-Esseili spoke to The Electronic Intifada a day before receiving his daughters body.
Words fail to express my pain. My beloved daughter, the closest person in the world to me,
was taken from me without being able to see her corpse, touch her clothes or kiss her, Ayman
said.
Ever since her killing, her mother has been demanding of me to bring Bayan back home,
somehow thinking that Bayan might still be alive but the army is detaining her, he said.

Palestinians carry the bodies of five teenagers killed by Israeli forces during their funeral procession in
Hebron on 31 October after Israel released the childrens bodies.
Shadi HatemAPA images

Her three-year-old brother, whom Bayan used to look after and play with, asks me all
the time about her, Ayman added. When I tell him that Bayan has gone to heaven, he
tells me that he, too, wants to go to heaven to see her again. He is convinced that
Bayan is at her grandparents place and might be upset with him and so has not
returned yet.
Bayan was a bright pupil who had hoped to study political science and economics at
university.
She was the one who made me my morning coffee every day, Ayman said. She did
have a great impact on Palestinian society but it was not what we thought it would
be. But Im definitely proud of her.
There is nothing harder than seeing pictures of your daughters blood-soaked and
bullet-ridden corpse on the mobile phones of soldiers, he said.

Ayman was detained after his daughters slaying; he said he was beaten and
interrogated. When he demanded to see Bayans corpse, soldiers instead showed him a
picture of her body after she had been killed.
Forced to wait
Perhaps no one understands Bayans father better than Muhammad al-Akhras. He was
forced to wait for nearly 12 years before the remains of his daughter were returned to
him.
On the first day of every Eid, the annual Muslim festivals, the cemetery of martyrs
in Dheisheh refugee campnear the West Bank city of Bethlehem is crowded with
families visiting the graves of their loved ones.
Al-Akhras, however, could only dream of visiting his daughters grave so that he could
lay a wreath and shed the tears that he had tried so resolutely to hold back.
His daughter Ayat, 17, blew herself up in a market in Jerusalem in March 2002, killing
a girl her same age and a security guard.
During that time, at the height of the second intifada, Dheisheh had been subjected to
daily raids and attacks by Israeli forces.
When I finally received her remains in February 2014, it was like saying that
suspended goodbye that we did not have the chance to utter, Muhammad told The
Electronic Intifada.

A coffin carrying the remains of Ayat al-Akhras is carried during her funeral in
Deheisheh refugee camp in February 2014 along with the remains of Daoud Abu Swai,
who exploded himself in a separate attack in Jerusalem more than a decade earlier.
Mamoun WazwazAPA images

Thousands attended Ayats funeral procession in February 2014, Muhammad said. He

added that since she was supposed to get married just after graduating high school, her
funeral was like a wedding party.
Even though al-Akhras managed to reclaim his daughters remains, he is still strongly
committed to the cause of returning all martyrs bodies. He has memorized the names
of those in the cemeteries of numbers.
He reads all the available information and regularly visits the workshops that the
campaign organizes. The 67-year-old can no longer walk and uses a wheelchair, but his
physical disability hasnt diminished his dedication to the cause.
I wish I could go to Hebron and march with the families of martyrs to demand the
bodies of their martyrs, he said. It was my indomitable faith that allowed me to
handle Ayats loss and I hope that all of them keep this faith and get to bury their
children.
Collective punishment
Detaining the bodies of Palestinian martyrs and later burying them in secret
cemeteries is designed to achieve multiple purposes. The policy imposes an additional
punishment on the dead and collective punishment on their families.
Martyrs bodies have also been used as potential bargaining chips in prisoner exchange
deals.
The policy also has more existential implications.
But by withholding the bodies, Israel is targeting the collective Palestinian memory
and dehumanizing those living under its colonial rule who dare to challenge its
occupation.
In her book, Security Theology, Surveillance and the Politics of Fear, the Palestinian

scholar Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian argues that the occupying colonial power does
not only control and expropriate the living, but also the dead and sites of Palestinian
burial.
Israel is still reading and writing the power of the dead as a security threat, she adds.
Every martyrs funeral is likely to turn into a mass protest and Israel is fully aware of
that.
In Jerusalem, Israel decides when Palestinians can obtain the bodies of their dead,
where they can bury them and the number of people allowed at the funerals. Israel has
even ordered families to hand over money to collect the bodies of their loved ones.
Fadi Alloun, 19, was shot and killed by Israeli police near Jerusalems Old City on 4
October.
His family was forced to bury him on 12 October in his Jerusalem neighborhood
of Issawiyeh rather than in a family plot closer to the Old City. Allouns body was only
handed over to the family before dawn on the day of the funeral after more than a
week of delay.
Defiance
Israel uses such tactics to try and break Palestinians spirits, but they have the opposite
effect. Instead of crushing people, Israels policies of punishment and control increase
social cohesion, communal solidarity and defiance.
Qassim Badran from Kufr Aqab, near Jerusalem, grieved the death of his 16-year-old
son Ishaq, who was killedby Israeli forces in the Old City earlier this month after an
alleged stabbing attempt. Following his sons killing, Badran was threatened
with home demolition and the revocation of his Jerusalem residency as his village is
located behind the massive wall Israel is building in the West Bank. His sons body has
not yet been returned to him.
I have also been subjected to an economic war my bank account was frozen due to
an old tax issue that dates back 12 years and Israeli authorities [have] issued a travel
ban against me, he told The Electronic Intifada.
It was my sons own decision to respond to Israels ongoing crimes and his decision
alone, but I will never disown him or blame him for what he did, Badran added.

Like all other parents from Jerusalem, Badran reiterated that he will never agree to
receive the body of his child unless all Jerusalem families are able to reclaim the bodies
of their children.
We are completely unified, he explained. I will treat the son of Jabal al-Mukabir [a
neighborhood in East Jerusalem] as if he were my own.
So far, families awaiting the return of loved ones bodies have decided against
submitting a petition to the Israeli high court. The families fear that the court will
reject their case.
And they do not have much trust in Israels judicial system.
An Israeli public prosecutor last week rejected a request submitted by a number of
families, according to Rami Saleh, head of the Jerusalem-based branch of the legal aid
center.
During a press conference in Ramallah last week, martyrs families stated that they will
not allow Israel to exploit their need to reclaim the bodies as a means of breaking their
spirits.
Lawyer Muhammad Alayan, father of Bahaa Alayan, shot dead by Israeli police last
month, vowed to keep on campaigning.
Every inch of this soil is Palestinian, Muhammad said. And wherever my son will be
buried, I know that he will be on Palestinian land.
Budour Youssef Hassan is a Palestinian writer and law graduate based in occupied
Jerusalem. Blog:budourhassan.wordpress.com. Twitter: @Budour48
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