‘New crime’: Hamas condemns Israel for exhuming hundreds of graves in Gaza

The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas has denounced a “new crime” by the “criminal” Israeli regime, saying Israeli forces dug up hundreds of graves in a cemetery east of the besieged Gaza Strip while searching for the body of the last captive.

“This moral and legal lawlessness by the Zionist entity is possible only because the international system refuses to hold it accountable for crimes unprecedented in modern times,” Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem said on Tuesday.

His comments followed a warning from Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, which described the Israeli army’s large-scale excavation east of Gaza City, carried out under the pretext of searching for the final Israeli captive, as deeply disturbing and a grave violation of humanitarian norms.

The organization stressed that Israel’s justification does not grant any legitimacy to violating the sanctity of Palestinian burial grounds or desecrating the remains of the dead. It said any search should be limited, tightly regulated, subject to stringent humanitarian safeguards and conducted under independent international oversight, conditions Israel has ignored.

Over the past two years, Israel has systematically destroyed cemeteries in the Gaza Strip, dug up and vandalised graves, tampered with bodies, and transferred dozens of remains.

On Monday, the Israeli military claimed it had recovered the remains of Ran Gvili, the last captive held in Gaza, and transferred them to the occupied territories. Gvili, an Israeli policeman, is believed to have been killed during the October 7, 2023, al-Aqsa Storm Operation.

Israel’s announcement came as Hamas confirmed it had fully met its obligations under the ceasefire agreement, saying the movement had devoted extensive efforts to locating the body and providing mediators with first-hand information that enabled the recovery.

Hamas emphasized that it has honored the first stage of the agreement “clearly and responsibly” and said the burden now lies on Israel to implement the remaining terms.

In a separate statement on Tuesday, Hamas denounced Israel for "withholding hundreds of bodies of Palestinian martyrs - whether those they seized from the Gaza Strip during the genocidal war or those that have been held for decades in cemeteries of numbers."

The movement said Israel’s refusal to return the bodies or disclose information about them constitutes a “brutal crime” and a blatant violation of basic human values, enabled by a shameful and complicit international silence.

Israel claims body of final captive recovered from Gaza

Ran Gvil return to Israel marks the end of Hamas’s obligation to return all 251 people, dead or alive, to Israel under the terms of the ceasefire deal.

Elsewhere in his remarks on Tuesday, Qassem said Israeli forces killed at least four Palestinians this morning after targeting them with aircraft while they were outside the so-called yellow line east of Gaza City.

The Hamas spokesperson said this attack, along with the broader pattern of ongoing assaults on Palestinians, reflects Israel’s determination to continue its genocidal war in the Gaza Strip. He described the strike as a blatant defiance of all efforts to secure a ceasefire and a clear violation of the agreement intended to halt the war.

Qassem added that any talk of ending the war, establishing peace mechanisms, or launching reconstruction efforts becomes meaningless amid the continued daily killing of civilians in the besieged territory.

Hamas has called on the guarantor countries to uphold their responsibilities by ensuring the implementation of all obligations stalled by the occupation, after its pretext had ended with the finding of the body of the last Israeli captive.

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