IOF kills Palestinian teenager, withholds his body

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Palestinian teenager Mohammad Hamad, 16, was directly shot and wounded near the village of Silwad, near Ramallah in the northern occupied West Bank, on Friday evening and succumbed to his injuries hours later, according to a Silwad councilor. 

The Israeli occupation forces have been actively storming villages in the occupied West Bank, aiming clearly at killing Palestinians and arresting others who, in turn, are confronting the occupation forces.

Watch| The moment when Israeli occupation forces shot 16-year-old Palestinian Mohamed Hamed during a raid into Silwad town, east of Ramallah on Friday before arresting him. Hamed succumbed to his injuries at dawn today, and Israeli occupation is still withholding his body. pic.twitter.com/uaHxyhjILQ

— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) June 25, 2022

This is happening as Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet has recently given a green light for killing Palestinians. 

“There are not and will not be limited for this war. We are granting full freedom of action to the army, the Shin Bet [domestic intelligence agency], and all security forces,” Bennet said last April.

Since the beginning of 2022, the IOF killed more than 70 Palestinians, 27 of them from Jenin and its camp including Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was covering an Israeli raid in Jenin.

See more: A 16-year-old Palestinian wrote his will hours before he was killed by “Israel”

Withheld bodies: "Israel's" brutality at its most

The practice of Israeli occupation confiscating and withholding Palestinian bodies violates international humanitarian law and international human rights law, which include absolute prohibitions on cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment and require parties to bury the deceased in an honorable manner. For Palestinian families, the practice amounts to collective punishment, which is also prohibited by international humanitarian law.

Adding salt to injury, the occupation imposes one of the most serious restrictions by obstructing any autopsy of the remains. 

"Israel" withholds the bodies of the martyrs as a part of its policy to avoid autopsies that would expose the IOF's heinous crimes. #Palestine pic.twitter.com/uL9QzG41UF

— Al Mayadeen English (@MayadeenEnglish) June 16, 2022

Furthermore, the Israeli occupation holds Palestinian bodies in freezing conditions for months, denigrating their condition, and making it more difficult for medical examiners to investigate the causes of death. 

As a consequence, it becomes extremely difficult to conduct evidence-based investigations into unlawful killings and excessive use of force against Palestinians, most notably children killed by Israeli occupation forces.

At the beginning of this month, social media users and activists launched a campaign to recover the bodies of Palestinians killed by Israeli occupation forces.

“Israel” has 103 Palestinians' bodies in refrigerators, and another 256 have already been buried without allowing families to perform their last rites, according to the Palestinian Prisoners Club.

In 2019, the Israeli occupation Court approved the detention of the bodies of Palestinians killed by IOF to be used as a bargaining chip in the future, a move Palestinians and rights groups condemned as inhumane.

“Israel’s” biomedical abuse and plunder of Palestinian bodies, most notably children, for usable organs and tissues is a widespread and highly contentious practice that persists to this day.

The longtime head of the Abu Kabir Institute of Forensic Medicine, Israeli Dr. Yehuda Hiss, casually admitted in one of his interviews to harvesting eyes, skin, bone, solid organs, and other parts without consent from the bodies of Palestinians withheld by the Israeli occupation forces.

Read more: Palestinian families in search of their sons' uncertain fate