For those who survived the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip, all that remains is rubble, suffering, and the remains of their loved ones still trapped beneath piles of cement and concrete blocks of homes destroyed by the war machine.
But access to the bodies of women, children, men, and the elderly has become a luxury for the residents of the Strip, who now hope for nothing more than the most basic forms of humane and compassionate treatment, if not for the living, then at least for what remains of their relatives.
The Israeli occupation bulldozers have left no rubble untouched, violating the sanctity of the dead and the right to their retrieval, and disregarding international law. Human rights organizations have warned of the danger posed by the Israeli occupation forces’ bulldozing and removal of rubble at a rate of 200 truckloads per day. This constitutes a deliberate concealment of evidence and thousands of bodies, and a blatant violation of international law. In an interview with Al Jazeera, Mohammed Saleh, director of the Palestinian NGO Network in Gaza, warned of the repercussions of this bulldozing in obliterating evidence of genocide and preventing international accountability. He pointed out that these actions “make it difficult to access sites and data that could help identify victims and their burial places.”
Saleh explained that the operations have affected more than 93% of the Gaza Strip’s cemeteries, with the bodies of martyrs, personal belongings, and weapons remnants being hidden by transporting and crushing the rubble within Israeli-controlled areas. This prevents the identification of victims or the exhumation of their remains.
He noted that the occupation prevents human rights and international teams and relief crews from accessing the “yellow line” areas, and called on the International Criminal Court to immediately dispatch fact-finding missions to investigate the crimes.
These testimonies come at a time when the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor has estimated that the occupation has removed or destroyed about 10 million tons of rubble, reinforcing fears of obliterating crucial evidence that would one day testify to the occupation’s crimes and reveal the fate of thousands of missing persons.
