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Beneath the soil of anonymous plots known only by numbers, behind locked morgue doors in sub-zero temperatures, the walls of detention centres, and in secret cemeteries across Israel, bodies lie in limbo—unreturned, unnamed, and unseen.
Some have been held incommunicado for decades, slowly lost to history. Many have joined them in the past eighteen months—fresh casualties in an unceasing war, a chilling reminder to Palestinians of the Israeli state’s attempt to control not only life, but death itself in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.
Gaza’s destruction since 7 October 2023 has been extensively documented. For nearly two years, a livestream of images and videos of bombardment, mass starvation, evidence of torture, incidences of sexual violence, mass incarceration, and even the discovery of mass graves has sent shockwaves around the world.
Largely invisible is the Israeli army’s protracted war on the dead, now accelerating rapidly.
“The numbers are far higher now,” said Charlotte Kates, co-founder of the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network. “[Before October 7], bodies being held by the Israeli authorities were mainly from the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. Now, there is also a growing number from Gaza.”
The practice of withholding bodies during or after armed conflict is not unique to Israel and Russia, but they are the only two known states with explicit laws authorising it as a state policy. This practice contravenes international humanitarian law, which mandates the respectful return of remains to families, and is not sanctioned by most other countries.
Israel’s policies on the issue date back to Britain’s imperial policies rolled out during the Palestinian Mandate. As early as 1930, British security forces buried the bodies of militants in graves far from their homes after their execution.
These informal practices were soon codified under Article 133 (iii) of the 1945 Emergency Regulations, granting military commanders sweeping authority to dictate the burial of executed individuals, including time, place, and who may attend.
This was subsequently amended in 1948, with provisions introduced to make “lawful for the Military Commander to order that the dead body of any person shall be buried in such a place as the Military Commander may direct,” and, “may, by such order, direct by whom and at what hour the said body shall be buried”.
This emergency law still remains in place.
After the British departed, the morbid counterinsurgency tool was incorporated by the army that same year, following the mass expulsion of the Palestinians and the close of the first Arab-Israeli war. But they also refined and expanded the measure, deploying it against Palestinian militants and civilians and Israel’s enemies across the Middle East.
Described by Israelis as “cemeteries for enemy combatants” and by Palestinians as the “cemeteries of numbers,” the graves are notorious for their shared characteristic of numbered placards meant to mark each corpse.
The policy went into high gear with the expansion of the occupation in 1967, going through various phases and becoming more widespread during periods of unrest and insurgency. Using the rationale of security and deterrence, Israeli authorities repeatedly argue that Palestinian funerals are potential flash points for riots and incitement.
Beyond collective punishment, bodies also hold political currency in negotiations, Dr Ahron Bregman, a senior teaching fellow in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, explained to Byline Times.
For both Israelis and Palestinians, Jews, Christians and Muslims alike, burying the dead without much delay is important. Holding bodies is used by both sides to put pressure on and milk concessions from the other side. It has always been like that in the Arab-Israeli conflict… Grotesque—yes. But that’s the reality
Dr Ahron Bregman, Department of War Studies at King’s College London
Since October 7, Israeli policy has metastasised. The number of Palestinian bodies held by Israeli authorities surged from 256 in 2022 to at least 684 by April 2025—a 167% increase.
The spike in numbers is driven by a strategy of collective punishment and terror, but this time in a more extreme form.
“This goes beyond a bargaining chip strategy; this is about silencing Palestinians amidst an ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing,” Kates argued.
It is a warning, a threat. It is not just physical violence but psychological violence intended to traumatise families and communities
Charlotte Kates, co-founder of the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network
Hamas’s seizure of hundreds of hostages, many of whom have died in captivity or have been killed by Israeli forces, has prompted Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to widen the macabre policy.
“The circumstances are related to the sheer number of Israeli hostages being held by Hamas,” said Nareman Shehadeh Zoabi, an attorney at Adalah, an Israeli-Arab human rights group. “A few Israeli hostages used to be the issue in the past, now there are over 60 hostages and their bodies are being held.”
However, the number of Palestinian bodies now estimated to be held could be far higher. Israeli authorities have yet to release details of bodies taken from Gaza, and current estimates exclude 1,600 Hamas operatives calculated to have been killed on October 7.
“Although we do not have specific information about the fate of the bodies of Hamas fighters killed on October 7, it is clear that they have not been returned,” said Rami Saleh, Director of the Jerusalem Branch of the Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center. “We believe the Israeli authorities are applying the same policy of withholding bodies to use them as leverage.”