The Grim Reality of Israel’s Corpse Politics
A Jacobin investigation explores Israel’s practice of using the bodies of slain Palestinians as bargaining chips, refusing to return them to their families. Denying the right to bury loved ones, this policy inflicts the anguish of mourning without closure.
Fadi Samara’s children hold a picture of their father, who was shot by Israeli forces in the West Bank almost four years ago. His body was never returned. (Jaclynn Ashly)
After Israeli forces shot and killed thirty-nine-year-old Fadi Samara in May of 2020, his mourning family dug him a grave in his village of Abu Qash, located in the occupied West Bank district of Ramallah.
But nearly four years later, his grave remains empty.
“I take the children to their father’s grave a few times a month even though we still have not received his body,” says Saja Muhammad, Samara’s thirty-one-year-old widow and mother to his five children, ages nine to three.
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