Palestinian Laid to Rest in West Bank as Israel Returns Body after 5 Months
Al-Jamal was killed on September 26th after he carried out a shooting attack in an illegal Israeli settlement that left two security guards and a border police officer dead.
His body was returned to his family on Friday night in the village of Beit Surik in the central occupied West Bank district of Quds. His family’s home had been punitively demolished by Israeli forces in November.
The funeral procession set off from the Palestine Medical Center in Ramallah where al-Jamal’s body was wrapped in the Palestinian flag.
He was then carried on shoulders towards his hometown where his family and hundreds of locals said their final goodbyes before burying him in the town's cemetery.
Al-Jamal was one of 84 Palestinians to have been killed by Israelis in 2017, according to Ma’an news agency.
Earlier this month the Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center (JLAC) reported that the Israeli regime was currently holding the bodies of 19 slain Palestinians killed in the past two years, along with 260 bodies of those killed since 1967.
Israel dramatically increased its policy of withholding bodies since the beginning of a wave of unrest across the occupied Palestinian territory in October 2015, although it has scaled back on the policy in recent months.
Israel has long had “cemeteries for the enemy dead,” also referred to as “cemeteries of numbers,” where Palestinians who died during attacks on Israelis are held in nameless graves marked by numbers.
Israel has attempted to negotiate the release of Palestinian bodies as well as several Hamas affiliates detained from the Gaza Strip in exchange for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers held by Hamas.
Source: Ma’an
