Tel Aviv: Israel’s High Court has ruled that the Israeli military can’t keep the bodies of slain Palestinians for prisoner and body swaps. Instead of banning the widely-condemned practice, however, the court gave the Israeli government time to enshrine it in law, reports RT.

In ruling that bodies cannot serve as bargaining chips, the court acted on a petition filed by families of deceased Palestinians whose remains have been retrieved by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), most recently in October, when IDF destroyed an underground tunnel leading from Gaza to the Israeli city of Negev.

Five bodies of Islamic Jihad members were discovered by the Israeli forces at the time and have been held since then.

“The State of Israel, as a nation of laws, cannot hold on to corpses for the purposes of negotiations at a time when there is no specific and explicit law that allows it do so,” the court stated in its decision, as cited by the Times of Israel.

The court, however, did not completely forbid the widespread practice, decried by human rights groups as violating both Israeli and international humanitarian law. Instead, it gave the Israeli government six months to enshrine the procedure into law.