The High Court of Justice on Sunday rejected six petitions by families of terrorists, all of them Israeli citizens, who demanded to receive their bodies which are held by the state.
Judge David Mintz reasoned that “at the time of writing, 100 abductees are still being held captive.” Regarding the terrorists’ bodies, he added: “It should be remembered that this is not about holding the bodies of innocent civilians who have not done any wrong. This is about terrorists.”
The Israeli terrorists either died in security detention or were eliminated during a confrontation with security forces. The family of a member of the Bedouin community in the Negev was one of the petitioners after the family member who was in the custody of Israel Prison Services died in the hospital on March 16, 2024.
Two weeks later, another Bedouin terrorist, a resident of the city of Rahat, who stabbed a soldier at the central bus station in Be’er Sheva, was eliminated. His family also petitioned the high court.
Another petition was submitted by the family of a terrorist resident of Ramla who was killed after seriously wounding a civilian in a stabbing attack in the city in April 2024.
The family of another terrorist, also an Israeli citizen, petitioned for the return of his body. According to security sources, he was involved in several shooting incidents targeting Israelis in 2023 and was killed in December of that year in an exchange of fire during his arrest.
A petition was also submitted by the family of a terrorist resident of Nahaf, an Arab town in Galilee, who was eliminated during a stabbing attack in Karmiel in July 2024, in which a soldier was killed and another soldier was injured.
The family of a terrorist resident of Arara in the Negev, who, according to security officials, was shot while carrying out an attack near the Damascus Gate in the Old City of Jerusalem in September 2024.
The families appealed to the High Court of Justice claiming that the bodies of the terrorists were being held illegally and that holding them violated the dignity of the deceased.
The state argued that holding the bodies was in accordance with cabinet decisions for the purposes of negotiations for the return of the hostages in a deal. Some of the families of the hostages joined the debate, arguing against the return of the bodies to the families of the terrorists.
Justices Mintz, Alex Stein, and Gila Kanfi-Steinitz ruled that “the extent of this court’s intervention in policy decisions made by the Cabinet on matters of a distinct security nature is extremely limited, and is reserved only for exceptional and extreme cases, in which the decision is seriously flawed. The Cabinet decision does not reveal a flaw that justifies our intervention.”
Judge Mintz ruled that “the starting point is that the military commander is given the authority to order the activation of the defense regulations and to order the temporary burial of the bodies of terrorists and their detention for the sake of negotiations to release hostages and missing persons, even when the bodies belong to Israeli civilians.”
