Bahaa Alian died in 2016, but his father has not buried him yet because israeli authorities never came back to him and their family his body. For this reason, they could not to perform the mourning rituals and neither carrying him on their shoulder to say goodbye to their child. “Having a funeral is what helps to the family to overcome the death. We couldn´t do this, so we sometimes feel hopeless”, adds.
More than six years later, he has no notice about how his son died and he has never received the death certificate. “We really don´t know the truth and are trying to discover what actually happened to Bahaa Alian to get on with our lives”, he says. “How is it possible to rest knowing that your child is in a cold room at -30C and that you will probably never be able to recognize his body because he will become just another number in the graveyard of numbers?”, asks.
One day, while he was working, he received a phone call which informed him that his son had been killed by the israeli army during a military raid. He tells what means to be the parent of a palestinian martyr and how it is not always something easy. “People cant see you crying or sad. You have to be proud of your son because he has died for the country”, explains. Azhar, the mother of Abdul Hamid, another martyr, explains that her son was buried with three martyrs and that there was something strange in the information that they gave to her about her son. “They put a foot number that was not the same which they wrote on the medical statement and some similar happened with the clothes he wore the day he went out”. She also adds how they can´t feel honor and glory for the death of their sons for the homeland and explains that she can´t understand how some families are proud of it.
In this situatio, families usually find support and comfort with people who are in the same situation. “We feel relieved when we talk with other parents who are as well fighting to know the truth and what really happened to their children”.
Over 400 palestinian have been buried in the graveyard of the numbers, located primarily in the Palestinian district of Tiberias. They keep the bodies in cold storage and after some time, bury them with a number which give to the families in order to they know where the body is. The withholding of remains is considered a post mortem punishment and a deterrent measure to repress and intimidate the Palestinian people in the face of the growing occupation.
Nadya Raja Tannous, a journalist specializing in the Israeli occupation of Palestine, explains how if a Palestinian is convicted of a crime by the State of Israel after his death in the West Bank, the army can conduct a post-mortem trial, where the body is placed in a storage facility inside Israel until the sentence is pronounced, which is what gives rise to the so-called cemetery of numbers.
Bureaucratic and legal management is slow, documentation is usually misrepresented and it takes a long time to receive information about their children, so it is the relatives themselves who create campaigns to speed up procedures. “We have not received support, everyone has looked the other way”, says. Jerusalem Center for Human Rights and Legal Aid (JLAC) is the one which represents the families before the Israeli justice to request the delivery of the bodies. Most of the relatives say it is a slow process. It sometimes can even last up for two years. For this reason, international pressure is very important in order to Israeli state reconsider this policy. This law was agreed by the emergency regulation which was promoted by the British Mandate government in 1945 and it allow the retention of martyr´s bodies.
This practice is consider to be a way of collective punishment and is part of humans rights violations such as the right to dignity, family life, religious freedom, property and the prohibition of inhumane treatment. Nowadays, they continue without being able to see the bodies of their children and without having an answer about what really happened. "How can we have the certain of that our children are murdered if we have not seen their bodies?", they wonder to themself. "We deserve to have an answer and burying our children", concludes.
Writers : Belen López, Sandra Martínez and Judith E. Castaneda