Israeli razing of cemeteries and necroviolence against Palestinians

Israeli forces damaged or destroyed at least 16 cemeteries in the Gaza Strip during the Gaza war in various places in Gaza within Palestine, as determined by evidence gathered by CNN, the New York Times and Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor.

According to Israel, their intentions were to: first, search for the bodies of Israeli hostages in a certain location after receiving intelligence to that end; and second, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) alleged, without providing evidence, that the digging up of Beit Hanoun Cemetery near Khan Yunis was due to a Hamas command center in a tunnel beneath the cemetery. CNN was unable to verify either the location of the tunnel being underneath the cemetery, and searched for but found no tunnel entrance on the cemetery grounds.

More broadly, there are reports of various forms of necroviolence against Palestinians (against corpses) in the ongoing occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In addition to the desecration or destruction of cemeteries, techniques include the withholding of Palestinian bodies from families, thus preventing the families' ability to mourn their loved ones; and "cemeteries of numbers" where graves are marked only with numbers and not names, thus dehumanizing the dead.