#i've seen this article spread around before but here it is with an archived link (which lets you bypass the paywall)

[heritageposts]

. . . But in 1948 Israel declared its sovereignty from the British Mandate through the besiegement of indigenous Palestinians. The new nation retained Regulation 133(3) with an important caveat: It was amended to give military commanders complete control over where a body is buried, as opposed to the original “community to which such person belongs.” This is the legal basis of postmortem detention, and over the last 80 years the scope of the law has expanded greatly. Namely, who is subject to postmortem detention by the military (from “enemy soldier” to the blanket term “terrorist”) and when the state is entitled to seize bodies (from “times of war” to “forever war on terror”). Regulation 133(3) can now impose restrictions on funerals when a body is returned to a family. When Palestinian prisoner Mustafa Arabat succumbed to torture in 1992, Israeli courts ruled in favor of the military to enforce that his funeral be held in the middle of the night and only attended by immediate family. Today, families whose bodies are eventually returned to them must abide by the military’s rules on how to express their final rites. Israeli law explicitly defines these funerals as a threat to “public order” and grants soldiers power over a family’s grieving.

. . . full article on The Nation (29 June, 2023)

[archived link]