RAMALLAH, March 6, 2011 (WAFA) - Participants in a workshop on “the international legal mechanisms to follow up the case of retrieving bodies of partisans kept by Israel” Sunday called for internationalizing the case and taking it to the international bodies in order to activate this important case.

This came during a workshop held in Ramallah and organized by the Information Centre of the Ministry of Justice, in cooperation with the national campaign to retrieve the kept bodies of partisans and to find the missing ones.

Participants stressed the need to pursue the case in its legal framework under the terms of international humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions of 1949, also the need to implement it as it obliges Israel to respect the dignity of the dead and enables their families to have a decent burial in line with national traditions and religious rites.

The Israeli government withholds bodies of 600 Palestinians and Arab war victims, killed throughout the years of struggle, confrontation, and opposition. For this purpose, Israeli Authorities created cemeteries called the 'Cemeteries of Numbers', all located in areas that Israel considers as closed military zones. Only four of them have been identified.

T.R./F.R.