Hamas plotted to dig up British soldiers’ graves in Gaza

Hamas planned to exhume the graves of British and Commonwealth troops buried in Gaza and use the remains as leverage to blackmail the British government, according to a report by The Telegraph on Friday.

The plan to hold the remains ‘prisoner’ are detailed in a seven-page document shared with the British newspaper by Israeli officials, who say it was uncovered by the IDF on Jan 31 at a compound in Khan Younis linked to Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif.

According to The Telegraph, Israel believes the plan was written on or around Oct 5 2022, by an unknown official. It was apparently in response to comments made by the then-prime minister Liz Truss on moving the British Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Demands were to have included at least one of the following: a retraction of the Jerusalem statement, evacuation of the soldier’s remains to cemeteries outside Gaza or the retrospective payment of land “lease fees” for the cemeteries dating back to 1917.

The document states: “If the British government does not meet the aforementioned demands, the Gaza municipality will act to remove all the corpses from the cemeteries and collect them in a special location by judicial order, declaring that the corpses are considered captive until a solution or deal is found. The British government will find itself in an embarrassing position in front of the British people, its political elite and its military if any country desecrates the corpses of its soldiers.”

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) has maintained a cemetery in Gaza for over a century, containing the remains of more than 3,000 Commonwealth troops from the World Wars.

Many of these soldiers died in 1917, fighting the Ottomans during a conflict that led to British rule in Palestine.

According to the website for the Commonwealth war graves commission, which states that “Currently, all sites in Gaza are closed to visitors”, the Gaza War Cemetery contains 3,217 Commonwealth burials of the First World War, 781 of them unidentified. Second World War burials number 210. There are also 30 post war burials and 234 war graves of other nationalities.

As of November 3, 2022, the British government has no plans to move the UK embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.