Israel to return bodies of 23 Palestinian attackers

That means 6.22 million Palestinians and 6.34 million Jews live in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel proper today.

Israel is still withholding the bodies of about 40 other Palestinians – most from occupied East Jerusalem.

Thousands of mourners have participated in a mass funeral procession in the occupied West Bank city of al-Khalil (Hebron) to lay to rest 14 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces.

Other than the 17 bodies received at Hebron’s hospital, one was received in Nablus, two in Silwad and one more in the Palestinian village of Arora, the army spokeswoman added.

The bodies, which were wrapped in Palestinian flags and covered with flowers, were carried to the al-Hussein Ibn Ali mosque in city center.

Amid accusations that Israel had harvested organs from the bodies of Palestinians killed while suspected of carrying out attacks on Israelis, Tamimi said: “Autopsies showed that the Israeli occupation hasn’t operated on the bodies or stolen any organs”.

Relatives of martyrs Shadi, and Fadi Khasib who delivered their bodies said that: “we should be proud of our martyrs and make huge funerals which they deserve, Israel knows that those funerals increase the popular mobilization and this is why they keep holding the bodies of our sons”.

The rumors were later confirmed in a television documentary, in which a former head of an Israeli institute admitted pathologists indeed harvested organs from dead Palestinians without the consent of their families but that the a practice it said ended in the 1990s.

Nearly daily Palestinian stabbings, car-rammings and shooting attacks have killed 21 Israelis and a USA citizen, raising fears of a wider escalation a decade after the last Palestinian uprising subsided.

Israel returned the bodies of three additional terrorists on Tuesday. She was then shot and killed.

In the latest shooting attack in Tel Aviv on Friday afternoon, two people were killed and six were injured in varying degrees.

November that Israel is refusing to return the bodies of Palestinians unless their funerals are kept “modest”.