Adalah Petitions Israeli Supreme Court to Order the Immediate Release of Ahmad Erekat's Body, Withheld by Israel for Nearly Six Years
On 23 April 2026, Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel filed a petition to the Israeli Supreme Court on behalf of Mustafa Erekat, the father of the late Ahmad Erekat, whose body has been withheld by Israeli authorities for nearly six years as a "bargaining chip" for future negotiations, demanding the immediate release of his son's body for burial.
Ahmad Erekat, a 26-year-old Palestinian resident of Abu Dis, was shot and killed by Israeli Border Police at a checkpoint outside Jerusalem on 23 June 2020. Israeli authorities seized his body immediately following the killing and have since refused to return it to his family. The family has consistently rejected the state's characterization of Ahmad as having carried out any attack against the Border Police. An independent investigation by Forensic Architecture, submitted to the Supreme Court by Adalah, raised serious questions about the state's account, finding that Ahmad was shot when he posed no real threat to anyone present and was denied medical attention while still alive.
Adalah first petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court on the family's behalf in June 2020. In August 2021, the Court rejected that petition by a majority of two to one, approving the withholding of Ahmad's body for the purpose of future negotiations for the return of bodies of Israeli soldiers and missing civilians in Gaza, a purpose the Court itself stressed was temporary in nature. The Court subsequently rejected Adalah’s request for an additional hearing in 2022.
The new petition argues that the October 2025 Israel-Hamas agreement, under which all Israeli captives, living and deceased, were returned (by January 2026), has entirely eliminated the basis of the Court's 2021 ruling. As the petition states, the Cabinet decisions underpinning the withholding of Ahmad's body, adopted in January 2017 and September 2020, were explicitly tied to the reality of Israeli hostages and remains being held in Gaza. The September 2020 decision itself explicitly stated that the policy would be revisited if circumstances changed. With the agreement concluded and all Israeli captives and remains returned, that basis no longer exists. The petition argues that the continued withholding of Palestinian bodies is therefore unlawful, without authority, and fails the proportionality test.
A Grave and Ongoing Violation of Human Dignity
The petition further emphasizes that the right to dignified and timely burial is an inseparable component of the constitutional right to human dignity. The nearly six-year withholding of Ahmad's body constitutes a severe and ongoing violation of the dignity of the deceased and his family, one that also violates the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Convention Against Torture (CAT), to which Israel is a State Party, and may rise to the level of a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which prohibits “outrages upon personal dignity,” which explicitly extends to the dead, as well as “the taking of hostages” and enforced disappearance.
This petition is part of Adalah's ongoing legal battle against Israel's brutal policy of withholding Palestinian dead bodies. Adalah currently represents 11 families including Palestinian citizens of Israel and residents of the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem in cases in various stages of judicial proceedings.
CLICK HERE to read the petition [Hebrew]
HCJ 51812-04-26 Mustafa Erekat v Minister of Defense et al.
Related press releases:
-
Israeli cabinet declares: We won't return bodies of Palestinians to their families for burial, 2 September 2020
