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Israel decided, on Sunday, to release the body of a Palestinian prisoner who died in its prisons in March, after about 6 months of his death.
This came in a joint statement by the Palestinian General Authority for Civil Affairs, which is an official liaison with Israel, the Commission of Prisoners' Affairs and Freed Detainees (governmental), the Palestinian Prisoners' Club, and the National Campaign for the Retrieval of Martyrs' Bodies (non-governmental).
The statement said that "the Israeli occupation authorities decided to release the body of the martyr prisoner Marwan Fathi Harb Allah, from Al-Ein camp in Nablus, next Thursday".
It explained that Harb Allah was arrested in January under the pretext of "incitement" and his death was announced on March 28, 2026, inside Megiddo Prison in northern Israel.
According to the statement, Harb Allah is one "of the 100 martyr prisoners whose bodies are still being held by the occupation authorities, and one of the oldest of them is the martyr prisoner Anis Dawla, whose body has been held since 1980".
The Palestinian institutions' statement added that Israel continues to hold the bodies of 805 Palestinians.
It mentioned that Harb Allah "is one of the 92 prisoners who have been martyred since the start of the genocide crime (in the Gaza Strip in October 2023), while the fate of dozens of detainees from the Strip remains unknown, amid the continued deprivation of their families of information about their fate and places of detention, thereby perpetuating the crime of enforced disappearance against them".
The institutions renewed their call on the international community "to assume its responsibilities, work to end the policy of holding bodies and enforced disappearance, reveal the fate of all missing and detained persons, open independent and effective investigation and documentation mechanisms, and release the bodies to their families without conditions or restrictions, and enable them to bury their children with dignity".
In September 2019, the Israeli Supreme Court authorized the military authorities to hold bodies based on the 1945 emergency systems, including their use in negotiations to recover Israelis or their bodies.
In 2020, the Security Cabinet (Cabinet) expanded the cases in which Palestinian bodies could be held.
As of early September, the number of Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons was about 9,350, including 90 female prisoners and about 350 children, according to prisoners' institutions.
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