EREZ CROSSING, GAZA STRIP // Israel yesterday returned the remains of 91 Palestinian fighters to the Palestinian territories in what the Israeli government calls a goodwill gesture aimed at reviving stalled peace talks.
The remains of 11 of the Palestinians were returned at the Erez Crossing where Palestinian factions celebrated the occasion.
The Palestinians were killed during attacks involving Israelis and had been buried as "enemy combatants" at an undisclosed Israeli cemetery in the West Bank.
Among those returned were suicide bombers and militants killed at a hotel in Tel Aviv that they had commandeered in 1975.
"We hope that this humanitarian gesture will serve both as a confidence-building measure and help get the peace process back on track," said Mark Regev, the spokesperson for Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
The last round of direct negotiations collapsed in late 2010 because Israel refused to stop building Jewish settlements.
Hamas, which controls Gaza, and the Islamic Jihad portrayed the move as a victory against Israel. Each paraded scores of masked and machine gun-toting militiamen at a raucous ceremony on the Palestinian side of Erez.
"We don't have the same weapons of our enemy, but what we do have is the will to fight, whether non-violently or through arms, with our blood and bodies," Ahmed Al Modallal, the deputy head of Islamic Jihad, said in front of television cameras in a beige business suit.
"It's a victory for the resistance!"
At the compound of Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority (PA) president, a ceremony was held to mark the return of the remains.
Many Palestinians see the delivery of the bodies as a sign of political weakness among their diverse and competing factions, said Mourad Jadallah, a researcher at the Ramallah-based Addameer Prisoner Society.
"Today's exchange of bodies is not being seen as a victory for the Palestinian Authority or the factions," Mr Jadallah said.
"It's being seen by the public as a convenient way for the Israelis to try to shore up Mr Abbas' support even though everyone knows the prisoner movement is the real force behind recent events."
The image of Mr Abbas' Fatah party, which he chairs, has taken a battering because of a mass hunger strike by hundreds of Palestinians in Israeli jails, he said.
Mr Abbas was excluded in the deal earlier this month between prisoners and Israeli authorities that ended the strike.
He also had to play second fiddle to Hamas' public relations coup last year, when it secured the release of more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for a single Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit.
Still, celebrations were planned in Ramallah, the de facto West Bank capital of Mr Abbas' PA.
In Gaza, Palestinian political factions were spirited. To the lyrics of militant songs - "The blood of our martyrs is the holiest in the universe!" went one - Hamas members waved their green-and-white flags. Waving back were the Islamic Jihad members clutching flags emblazoned with Jerusalem's Al Aqsa Mosque with two machine guns pointing out of it.
By mid-afternoon, a dozen factions had joined in.
For the family members receiving the remains of loved ones, however, the cacophony of catchphrases and nationalist slogans was overwhelming.
"I came here so I can finally bury my son," said Ahmed Rokha, 70, whose son, Moawiyeh, blew himself up on an Israeli settlement in 1995.
Hassan Al Khatib, 77, rolled his eyes at the spectacle of flag and-gun-toting youth. He declined to give credit to any Palestinian faction for securing the release of the remains of his nephew, Khaled, who in 1995 drove a car packed with explosives into a bus carrying Israeli settlers.
"What they did by their strike has done more for us, the Palestinian people, than anything that we have been doing here on the outside for years," he said, referring to the Palestinians who have been on a hunger strike in Israeli prisons.
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