Bereaved families and protesters came on Wednesday morning to the High Court of Justice for a hearing on the petition filed by the family of terrorist Walid Daqqa for the release of his body following his death last April of cancer in an Israeli security prison. The family is asking to allow his burial in the Israeli-Arab town of Baqa al-Gharbiyye near Hadera.
The bereaved families confronted the petitioners and shouted in the hall: “Death to the terrorists.” MK Almog Cohen (Otzma Yehudit), who was on hand to support the protesters, said it was their democratic right to express their position against the release of the body.
The hearing itself took place behind closed doors, to avoid a repeat of bereaved families’ yelling at the judges to be more Jewish and less concerned with what the judges in The Hague might say.
Nitzan Alon, commander of the IDF POW Directorate, who took part in the closed hearing, was later sneaked out of the building through a side door, to avoid confrontations with the angry families.
Daqqa, an Israeli citizen, was part of a PFLP terror cell that in 1984 abducted and killed an Israeli soldier. Daqqa was arrested two years later, and charged with commanding the cell. He received a life sentence without parole, but his sentence was later reduced to 37 years. In 2021, Daqqa was diagnosed with cancer and would have been released upon completion of his sentence in 2023, but he received another two-year sentence in 2018 for smuggling mobile phones to prisoners.
The High Court judges decided to allow family members of Daqqa’s victim, the soldier Moshe Tamam, to join the hearing as respondents to the petition. But the court denied the request to join that was submitted by Tzvika Mor, the father of Eitan Mor who was kidnapped to Gaza on October 7, saying, “We saw no room for the addition of this applicant due to the delay in submitting his application, and the written material he submitted will suffice.”
Moshe Tamam’s brother, Oren, said in an interview outside the courtroom: “Walid Daqqa was the head of the cell, he was a planner, an initiator. For 40 years he continued to generate terrorism from inside the prison. He was a role model for all the terrorist organizations – Fatah, and Hamas, and was at the top of the Hamas release list. We were happy that he reached heaven with 72 virgins and hoped that the rest of the terrorists who murdered my brother would end the same way. I came to the Supreme Court to thwart the release of his body.”
Attorney Avi Milikovski, arguing for the State Prosecutor’s Office in the Justice Ministry, said at the hearing: “The terrorist Walid Daqqa is an Israeli citizen in terms of the level of authority of the state to keep his body to facilitate the return of our abductees. We explained why there was no difficulty there.
“In terms of the terms of the cabinet decisions that dealt with the criteria for the possession of terrorists’ bodies, we also pointed out that the body of the terrorist has a special connection to Hamas. We pointed out that this corresponds to the decision of the cabinet. We presented as much as was possible through General Nitzan Alon, who explained the importance of retaining the body.”
During the hearing, right-wing MKs Almog Cohen and Tali Gottlieb made comments at the court, and the judges found it difficult to continue the hearing. Judge Isaac Amit said to Gottlieb: “Knesset Member Gottlieb, you were a lawyer, you know how to behave in the courtroom.”
She replied: “In my darkest dream I did not believe that a court would give the terrorists the right of standing.”
