Warning about the erasing of the remains of thousands of missing people in Gaza

The “Palestinian Center for the Missing and Forcibly Disappeared” warned that the Israeli occupation army’s daily operations to move hundreds of tons of rubble from the destroyed areas in the Gaza Strip threaten to obliterate the remains of thousands of missing people and destroy evidence that could be crucial in determining their fate and identities, while Israeli bombing continues and dozens of bodies are being pulled from under the rubble.

The center said in a statement today that the occupation army is carrying out random rubble transfer and breaking operations inside closed military areas, which leads to the mixing of body parts with debris and risks their loss, making future genetic testing to identify victims extremely difficult, and perhaps impossible.

The center confirmed that the buildings and sites destroyed during the war are not just rubble but constitute “temporary graves, crime scenes, and evidence of what happened in the Strip,” and therefore dealing with them requires preservation, documentation, and examination according to the standards used in forensic investigation and criminal search operations.

It stressed that destroying remains and obliterating evidence constitutes a violation of the Geneva Conventions and the First Additional Protocol, in addition to hindering efforts to uncover the fate of the missing, track cases of enforced disappearance, and erase evidence related to detention and liquidation operations.