Doctors have alleged that the Israeli army Gaza By digging the courtyard of Al-Shafa Medical Complex in the belt of the hundreds present there The corpses was taken into possession and taken to an unknown location without any justification.
A number of human rights institutions and organizations have recovered the bodies of a few people from the Al-Shafa complex and the Indonesian hospital Israel It has called for the formation of an independent international commission of inquiry to investigate the allegations of seizure.
This came after doctors from Gaza examined some of the returned bodies, which the Israeli army recently handed over to the Red Cross.
He noticed the theft of eye cornea, cochlea and other organs like liver, kidney and heart from dead bodies. According to government figures, about 7,000 people are missing in Gaza, dozens of whom are being held captive by Israel.
Remains and corpses
In 2019, the Israeli Supreme Court issued a ruling allowing the military governor to seize bodies and temporarily bury them in so-called number cemeteries (closed military areas where bodies or remains are buried). buried anonymously with numbers engraved on metal plates). At the end of 2021, the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, further strengthened this by legislating. It authorizes the police and army to keep the remains of dead Palestinians.
International law emphasizes the need to respect and protect the bodies of those killed in armed conflict, as the Fourth Geneva Convention stipulates that parties must not loot and dispose of the dead. All possible steps should be taken to prevent mutilation, while the United Nations considers trafficking in human organs a ‘crime’.
The United Nations Committee on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice issued a resolution in May 2014, banning and recommending measures to combat the trafficking of human organs and human beings.
According to a study, the stock of ‘human skin’ in Israel is spread over 170 square meters and it is preserved in the ‘Israeli Skin Bank’ established in 1985. Its primary supplier was the Israeli Forensic Institute in occupied Jerusalem. The bank proved its worth during the Second Intifada in 2000, when it managed to save the lives of many burned-out Israelis.
According to a report prepared by the Organ Transplantation Committee of the European Union in collaboration with the World Health Organization, Tel Aviv ranks 33rd among 55 European countries in terms of organ transplantation per population.
Rich history
However, doctors working in several hospitals confirmed to the Euro-Mediterranean Observatory that forensic medical examinations are not sufficient to prove or disprove organ theft, especially when the bodies have undergone surgery in the past. He has also demanded a proper analytical examination of the dead bodies. “Israel has a long history of detaining the bodies of dead Palestinians,” the Geneva-based Observatory confirmed.
The Observatory pointed out that Israel ‘detains them in secret mass graves located in certain areas’. He said he had observed in the past that ‘Israeli authorities deliberately release West Bank residents their frozen bodies after a period of detention on the condition that they not be opened. What could be the reason behind organ theft?’
According to the Observatory, Israel is the only country that detains the bodies of the dead and uses it as a systematic policy. It is said to be the world’s largest hub for the illegal trade in human organs. Refusal to hand over the bodies of the dead to their families can amount to collective punishment. Doing so is prohibited by Article 50 of the Hague Regulations and Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Legitimate doubts
The National Campaign for the Recovery of Martyrs’ Bodies believes that the suspicions raised by the Observatory that Israel is stealing Palestinian organs under current circumstances are justified and not out of the question, especially when Israeli authorities demand that the bodies be buried when extraditing them.
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In view of any possible action by the families of the victims, they hand over the frozen bodies at night and without post-mortem. The move prevents Palestinians from performing forensic medical procedures until the body is thawed.
Experts say it takes at least 24 to 48 hours, but most families can’t afford to wait. They do a CT scan instead of an autopsy.
According to the campaign data, since 2015, Israel has frozen the bodies of about 177 Palestinians from the West Bank and Jerusalem in special freezers at minus 40 temperatures.
According to campaign coordinator Hussain Shujaya, the campaign’s follow-up and legal petitions before Israeli courts since 2008 have not swayed Israel.
Shujaya added: ‘We have prepared a complete file for the Red Cross with the names and grave numbers of the bodies detained and if Israel refuses to include them in future human and body exchange agreements. If so, he will lose the justification for keeping them in custody.’
The organization has no conclusive evidence to prove that Israel stole organs or skin from Palestinian corpses.
Serious concerns
Physicians for Human Rights, a non-governmental human rights organization in Israel, said that the Israeli army’s raid on al-Shafa Hospital in Gaza and the seizure of several bodies reinforces the concerns of organ theft and trade.
Director of Research and Projects of the organization Aseel Abu Ras said, “There are serious concerns that the army continues to steal organs from the bodies of dead Palestinians and is also using them in ongoing negotiations regarding exchange agreements.” .’ He further said that ‘over the years there have been reactions and reports from credible sources that have raised many concerns about the theft of organs, including skin, from dead Palestinians.’
Israel’s National Center for Organ Transplantation indicated that during 2017, it performed 520 organ transplants on critically ill patients, including 222 kidney transplants and people with severe burns. Dozens of operations are involved. During the year 2016, it performed 839 corneal transplant operations for the blind, including 155 bone transplants and 55 heart valve transplants.
Allegations of the Palestinians
Israeli soldiers take up positions in an armored vehicle in the border area adjacent to Gaza on November 16, 2023 (AFP/Kenzo Trebullard)
At a time when the Jewish community practically does not accept the idea of organ donation, Israel has the world’s largest skin bank, which reinforces the accusations against it. At the end of 2015, the head of Israel, the representative of the Palestinian Authority to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, in a letter sent to the United Nations Security Council, accused Israel of stealing organs from the bodies of Palestinians killed by its army.
Mansoor wrote in his letter at that time that after returning the bodies of Palestinians killed by the occupying forces during October 2015 and after medical examination, it was clear that the bodies were returned without corneas and other organs. .’
Israel has denied harvesting the organs of dead Palestinians without the consent of the families, calling such accusations ‘anti-Semitic’.
In July last year, the Palestinian Authority accused Israel of using the bodies of Palestinians detained in medical laboratories at Israeli universities, which it described as a “flagrant violation of human rights and scientific values, principles and ethics.” .’ The Palestinian Prime Minister, Muhammad Shatia, at the time called on international universities to boycott Israeli universities.
After Israeli authorities announced in April 2017 that they had lost 121 of the 123 Palestinian bodies they had held since the 1990s, human rights centers and associations, including the HaMoked Center for the Defense of Individuals and Jerusalem The Center for Human Rights accused Israel of ‘negligence’.
The importance of the body file to Palestinians led the Palestinian Authority in 2008 to mark August 27 each year as a national day for the return of bodies from Israeli custody, during which events are held to commemorate them. is done
Israeli law, on the other hand, allows the detention of corpses to be used as a future bargaining chip and to exchange Israeli prisoners held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Note: This writing It has previously been published on Independent Arabia.
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2024-09-23 07:52:12
