HCJ rules to delay terrorists' bodies return until further hearing
Chief Justice Hayut accepts state's request for further hearing on appeals by terrorists' families to return their bodies; original December ruling stated state had no authority to use bodies as bargaining chips in negotiations with Hamas over return of Israeli POWs, MIAs.
The High Court's original decision said the state was obliged to hand over the terrorists' bodies back to their families.
The verdict, with a majority opinion by Justices Yoram Danziger and George Karra and a minority opinion of Justice Neal Hendel, thus accept appeals by family members of the terrorists whose bodies were held by Israel, and ruled that the country had no authority to hold them for the purpose of negotiations.
The terrorists' families appealed to the court demanding the bodies be returned to them. The petition encompassed nine bodies—seven of which have already been buried—among which are the bodies of those who carried out attacks in East Talpiot and Kiryat Arba, where the late Hallel Yaffa Ariel was murdered in her home about a year and a half ago.
The state refuses to return the bodies on the claim that holding them might help in obtaining a prisoner exchange deal with Hamas, which holds the bodies of late IDF soldiers Lieutenant Hadar Goldin and Staff Sergeant Oron Shaul, who were killed in Operation Protective Edge, and civilians Abera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed.
Two weeks after its previous ruling, the state submitted a request for a further hearing to the court, claiming the original ruling "constituted harm to the state's toolbox and to existing law seeking to promote negotiations to return living civilians and soldiers' bodies."
The court's December ruling raised considerable ire among Israel's political ranks, as well as incensed bereaved families. Members of the Security Cabinet made it patently clear then that the bodies will not be returned and that the principles delineated in the justices' majority opinion were unacceptable.
The ministers did, however, say that no further legislation on the matter will be sponsored until such times as the High Court replies to the request for a further hearing, which it has decided to accept Monday.
