PA and Israel reach agreement to return attackers' bodies to their families

The Israeli security services are currently holding seven Palestinian assailants’ bodies.

By ADAM RASGON
Updated: AUGUST 17, 2016 00:49
Palestinian mourners carry the bodies of Maram Abu Ismail, 23, and her brother Ibrahim Taha, 16, who were shot dead by Israeli police last month at the Qalandiya checkpoint (photo credit: AFP PHOTO)
Palestinian mourners carry the bodies of Maram Abu Ismail, 23, and her brother Ibrahim Taha, 16, who were shot dead by Israeli police last month at the Qalandiya checkpoint
(photo credit: AFP PHOTO)
Authority reached an agreement on Tuesday to allow for the burial of Palestinians from east Jerusalem who died while carrying out attacks against Israelis in the past year.
The Israeli security services are currently holding seven Palestinian assailants’ bodies.
“Israel will release the body of Muhammed Jamal al-Kaluti to his family on Thursday at 1 a.m. on the condition that his funeral procession includes no more than 25 people,” Prisoners’ Club Chairman Qadura Fares told The Jerusalem Post in a telephone conversation. “If the first funeral takes place peacefully and without problems, Israel will release a second body, and then a third body and so forth.”
Fares said that he strongly opposes the policy of withholding assailants’ bodies.
“I condemn and reject withholding bodies.
Why does Israel have to withhold someone’s body after he has been killed? I do not think a dead body forms a security concern.”
Meanwhile, the Israeli security services maintains that it does not want funerals to be used as a pretext for incitement and further violence.
The High Court of Justice ordered the government on July 25 to issue an opinion on why it had not allowed the bodies to be buried. Thereafter, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan and the Palestinian Authority started negotiations and reached an agreement on Tuesday.
The government had previously agreed to return the assailants’ bodies to their families in May. However, Erdan froze the process after he claimed that Palestinians violated the government’s burial conditions.