Return in coffins.. an Israeli decision

It would have been better for Israel to have its prisoners returned alive, rather than some of them returning as corpses in coffins, as happened yesterday, when Israel recovered four bodies. The reason for this is the ruling issued by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who repeatedly refused to reach an agreement and release the Israeli detainees, giving priority to the interests of his ruling coalition and his remaining in power, despite the great pressure exerted by the families of the detainees and their numerous appeals. The agreement came late, which led to the death of a number of detainees.

It was clear that the Israeli army was the one who killed its prisoners, by bombing their detention centers, and the Israeli government alone bears responsibility for its stubbornness and insistence on continuing the war and aggression, knowing that the resistance preserved the lives of the occupation prisoners as much as possible, and provided everything it could, and treated them humanely, but the army killed them along with their captors, in its criminal campaign during which it killed about 18 thousand children, and this particular part was narrated by the resistance to respond to the occupation’s claims and its deception of world public opinion, by promoting the narrative of Hamas killing children, while Israel is the one who committed the massacres and continues to do so against the innocent of our people, especially our children.

Yesterday, during the ceremony of handing over the bodies of the Israeli prisoners, the resistance was keen to respect the sanctity of the dead and the feelings of their families. They were handed over to the International Red Cross in closed coffins and in a decent manner. The process was carried out smoothly and calmly, at a time when Israel is returning the bodies of Palestinian martyrs in plastic bags and in unsanitary vehicles, without taking their sanctity into consideration.

What is strange in yesterday’s statements was what was issued by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, where he claimed that displaying corpses is abhorrent and cruel, and is considered a slap in the face to international law. The answers to these statements: Where was this Commissioner, his voice, and even his whisper when the bodies of Palestinian martyrs were being delivered in garbage bags? What is his position on the hundreds of bodies of Palestinian martyrs that are still being held in Israel’s “cemeteries of numbers”?

Gaza sent many messages yesterday, most notably the delivery of the bodies of Israeli prisoners at a point near the eastern cemetery in Bani Suhaila, where the Israeli army worked and exhumed Palestinian bodies from graves, claiming the need to identify them to determine whether they belonged to detained Israelis, in a blatant violation of all international conventions and norms, at a time when slogans of Palestinian national and Islamic action factions appeared, as an important signal to the American administration and the Israeli government that the decision of who rules the Gaza Strip is a decision that goes back to Palestinian consensus only, and does not allow it to be outside of this consensus.

Netanyahu's failures continue, as he leads Israel to the abyss. The senior Israeli journalist in Maariv (Ben Caspit) described him as a terrible person, for attacking the head of the Shin Bet and the army leaders, and attributing the successes to himself, while in fact he is responsible for all the failures.

The Israeli street can only blame Netanyahu, because he is the one who decided to return some prisoners in coffins as a result of his stubborn policies.