While government figures in Gaza estimate there are around 7,000 missing people, dozens of whom are being held by Israel, human rights groups today expressed their fears that they are suspected of “organ theft” from them.

The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Watch has called for an independent international commission of inquiry into the Israeli army’s detention of the bodies of those killed at the Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza and an Indonesian hospital in the northern Gaza Strip.

He also pointed to other cases of detaining bodies that he assigned to the main Salah al-Din road in the center and south of the sector from the vicinity of the displacement corridor.

Euro-Med reported that the Israeli army also dug up a mass grave established ten days earlier in a courtyard of the Shifa medical complex, exhumed the bodies of the dead and detained them.

He pointed out that the Israeli army is holding on to the bodies of dozens more before handing over dozens of bodies to the International Committee of the Red Cross and transporting them to the southern Gaza Strip for burial. Others died, according to a German news agency.

The Euro-Mediterranean Observatory raised suspicions about the theft of organs from the bodies of the dead, including observations published by doctors in Gaza who quickly examined some of the freed bodies and noted that organs such as corneas had been stolen. Eye and cochlea and other vital organs like liver, kidney and heart.

Doctors working at several hospitals told the Euro-Med team that forensic medical examination is insufficient to prove or disprove organ theft, especially in light of previous surgical interventions on many bodies.

They said it was impossible to accurately analyze the bodies of the dead, held by the Israeli army under intense air and artillery fire, and the constant influx of wounded, but they found many signs of the organ. Theft.

Israel has a long history of detaining the bodies of dead Palestinians, the Euro-Mediterranean Observatory said. It keeps the bodies of at least 145 Palestinians in special refrigerators, and it refuses to acknowledge the bodies of about 255 people in the Numbers cemetery and 75 missing persons.

He pointed out that Israel relies on burying the bodies of dead Palestinians in so-called “enemy war graves,” secret mass graves located in specific areas such as closed military zones, in which burials are carried out anonymously. Numbers are engraved on metal plates attached to bodies or remains.

Euro-Med reported that Israeli authorities deliberately released the bodies of West Bank residents from their homes. Bodies should not be mutilated, which may conceal the theft of certain organs.

He highlighted that in recent years, Israel has sought to legalize the matter, including a 2019 ruling by Israel’s Supreme Court to provide justifications for detaining the bodies of dead Palestinians and stealing their organs. The ruler intercepted the bodies and temporarily buried them in what were known as number tombs.

At the end of 2021, the Israeli Knesset (parliament) passed a law authorizing the police and army to hold the remains of dead Palestinians.

In recent years, there have been reports of illegal exploitation of the bodies of dead Palestinians, including stealing organs from them and using them in medical school laboratories at Israeli universities.

Israeli doctor Meir Weiss revealed in his book (In Their Dead Bodies) that organs were stolen from the bodies of dead Palestinians and transplanted into the bodies of Jewish patients and used by medical faculties at Israeli universities for research.

But even more alarming, Yehuda Hess, the former director of the Abu Kabir Institute of Forensic Medicine in Israel, admitted to the theft of human organs, tissues and skin from dead Palestinians at different times. knowledge or consent of their families.

The Euro-Mediterranean watchdog confirmed that Israel, the only country to detain dead bodies and practice this as a formal policy, is content to justify being classified as the largest global center for the illegal trade in human organs. The policy of detaining dead bodies as a “security deterrent” is in defiance of international charters and treaties prohibiting it.

The Fourth Geneva Convention While the Fourth Geneva Convention emphasized the need for parties to the conflict, he emphasized the need for Israel to abide by the rules of international law. Measures to prevent looting of the dead and mutilation of their bodies.

The Euro-Mediterranean Observatory also confirmed that refusing to hand over the bodies of the dead to their families for a dignified burial and their religious beliefs could constitute collective punishment as prohibited in Article 50 and Article 33 of the Hague Regulations. Fourth Geneva Conference.