Grave Number ...?

Israel hasn't only been harassing living Palestinians by making living for them in their land hard intolerable, but it also innovated a way to irritate both living and dead Palestinians. One of the major human rights violations that Israel has committed is the 'Numbers Cemeteries'. Numbers Cemeteries hold the bodies of Palestinians who were killed by the Israeli forces, or who died in Israeli prisons. These cemeteries do not have head stones or names, they only hold reference numbers that only Israel knows about, and got access to.

'Em Mahmoud' has lost her son in a military operation, after which his body was taken by the Israeli militants and graved in one of the numbers cemeteries. She describes how hard it is to know that his body is somewhere but she didn't get the chance to kiss his head as usually done. Ibrahim Masoud, who also lost a son by the Israeli operations described his feelings and said that this kind of inhumane action makes him feel that he's been tortured twice, once for losing his son and the other when he is robbed the right to take a last look at his son's body.

Last month, We have Names and We Have a Homeland was published by the JLAC (Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center). This book is supposed to include all the names of Palestinian prisoners who are suspected to be dead and martyrs whose bodied are in numbers cemeteries. JLAC also holds a lot of activities concerning Palestinians' sufferings from Israel's violations, especially in human rights field. JLAC tries its best to provide help for Palestinian families to return their beloveds' bodies. Another question is raised about the reason Israel wants to keep these bodies under its control-other than psychologically abusing Palestinian families- as Israel has been accused for organ harvesting. Arab- Israeli Knesset member, Mohammed Barakeh argues with the Israeli government to give back the bodies to the Palestinian authorities. Barakeh also says that this type of action, even if to dead bodies, is considered a human rights violation, and Israel should be punished by the whole world for hiding such an issue from the international media.

These cemeteries occurred with the Lebanese civil war, when the IDF committed many war crimes, and needed to hide them. Back then, those cemeteries included Lebanese civilians as well as Palestinian refugees. Until now, only four of these cemeteries are known to exist; Banat Yacoub- on the borders of Lebanon, Syria, and Israel-between Jericho and Damieh bridge- on the Jordanian Israeli borders- Refedim –Jordan- and Sh-heita- North Israel, next to the Sea of Galilee. One of the major figures of the resistance who are suspected to be in one of those cemeteries is Dalal Al Mughrabi, whose body hasn't been exchanged in the Hizbullah- Israel exchange of dead bodies and prisoners.

It is a shame that we are reaching a point where we are to accept the fact that we are being persecuted and killed each and every day, and argue whether our dead bodies should be treated respectfully, as any religion implies, or not. It's a shame that the world will always hear of human rights violations in the whole world, except in the land we belong to. It's such a shame that these cemeteries are kilometers away, but we chose not to know about them. It's a disgrace that a mother is somewhere in this 21 century world, is not asking for her son back, but for his body. Is this the bottom we waited to hit?

Roqayah Tbeileh