Joint Submission to the Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary

Despite efforts contesting the constitutionality of Israel’s practice of withholding Palestinian bodies as bargaining chips based on the cabinet decision, in September 2019, the Israeli High Court of Justice decided, in a 4-3 majority, that Regulation 133(3) authorises the Israeli military to withhold bodies as bargaining chips, greenlighting the continued implementation of the cabinet decision. [...] As of the time of writing, medical and rescue teams are unable to reach the area, in another manifestation for the lack of respect for the dignity of the dead and their families.14 Moreover, Palestinian bodies that could be retrieved from beneath the rubble or fatally shot by the IOF had to be buried in the closest available locations – such as gardens, marketplaces and roadway medians (central re. [...] MAG’s handling of the hundreds of criminal complaints submitted by organisations regarding the killing, and serious injury, of Palestinians by the IOF during previous military aggressions on Gaza or the Great March of Return, as well as the effective sanctioning of violations of peremptory norms of international law by Israeli courts, underscore Israel’s unwillingness and inability to undertake ge. [...] In the words of the former Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967, Mr Michael Lynk, “[t]he enemies of accountability are impunity and exceptionalism”.31 In a context of institutionalised 25 Adalah and Forensic Architecture, “Execution and Mass Graves in Tantura, 23 May 1948”, 24 May 2023, available at: . [...] In light of the above, we urge the Special Rapporteur to: - Recognise that Israel’s systematic and institutionalised excessive use of force and withholding of bodies contribute to the maintenance of Israel’s settler- colonialism and apartheid; - Address the ongoing Israeli genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, including the high level of killings, which forced the reliance on mass graves, denying.