Palestinian Civil Defense Condemns ‘Double Standards’ in Recovery of Israeli and Palestinian Bodies in Gaza

Gaza (QNN)- The Palestinian Civil Defense in Gaza has lambasted the “double standards” being shown by some organisations that are bringing heavy equipment into the Strip to search for the bodies of Israeli captives while ignoring those of tens of thousands of Palestinians that still need to be retrieved after two years of Israeli genocide.

“It breaks our hearts that some agencies and organisations have brought in the necessary heavy powerful equipment and bulldozers only to search for the bodies of Israeli captives while no equipment is available for 10,000 bodies of Palestinian citizens to be recovered from under the rubble,” the agency spokesperson, Mahmud Basal, said.

“This represents a double standard that in no way reflects humanity. True humanity requires the same care to be given to Palestinian bodies as is given to Israeli bodies.”

Basal said the retrieval of a single body can take 12 hours of work, given the scale of the devastation in Gaza.

“I think we need 10,000 days to recover the bodies of 10,000 martyrs. This means that we need a very large amount of heavy equipment. … The trucks, bulldozers and excavators that have entered the Strip are nowhere near sufficient to carry out our task,” he said.

He added that the retrieval of bodies was complicated by the issue of where to put the sheer mass of rubble.

“If the rubble is removed, where will we take it and where will we put it? Is the issue just about recovering the bodies, or is it also about recovering the bodies, removing the rubble and finding places to put it?” he asked.

“The issue requires the integration and cooperation of all parties, so that we can immediately start working on this and recover the bodies of the martyrs.”

An Israeli government spokesperson said that to search for captives’ remains, the Red Cross and Egyptian teams have been permitted beyond the ceasefire’s “yellow line”, which allows Israel to retain control over 58 percent of the besieged enclave.

Moreover, heavy machinery has been allowed to enter the Gaza Strip to remove debris and try to get to the tunnels or underneath the homes or structures that the captives were held in and killed in.

But the new equipment is being prioritised for recovering the remains of Israeli captives, rather than assisting Palestinians in locating their loved ones still trapped beneath rubble and reconstructing critical infrastructure.

Widespread anger in Gaza after equipment arrived to search for bodies of Israeli captives, while thousands of Palestinian bodies remain under the rubble with no international effort to retrieve them.

Tonight’s footage shows efforts to recover the body of an Israeli in Nuseirat. pic.twitter.com/whGCCJiECl

— Ramy Abdu| رامي عبده (@RamAbdu) October 27, 2025