Mark Urban, the former Newsnight diplomatic and defence editor, is among many Britons alive today who have relatives buried in Gaza.
His great uncle, Lance Sergeant Walter Holmes, was killed in the Second Battle of Gaza on April 19, 1917, when he was 18 years old.
His battalion, the Isle of Wight Rifles, launched its attack with over 800 men from which only 92 returned.
“They were among 6,000 Allied casualties in a slaughter that rivalled some of the worst scenes on the Western Front,” Mr Urban wrote after visiting his uncle’s grave there in 2009.
Paul Whatley, 70, whose great uncle Edward Whatley is buried in the Deir El Belah War Cemetery in Gaza, described the plan discussed in the document as “disgusting”.
Mr Whatley said he took great pride in his great-uncle, who was shot and died from his injuries aged 19 in 1917. He had served as a rifleman in the Hampshire Regiment and Mr Whatley’s father, Edward, was named after him.
“I’m disgusted that they’d consider using the bodies of soldiers as bargaining chips.
“Nothing could ever justify doing something like that, I’m horrified,” said the retired maintenance worker and father-of-five.
Leslie Lloyd Roberts, the nephew of Lance Corporal Robert Edward Roberts, a bugler in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers who was killed in the First Battle of Gaza in 1917, also called for greater respect to be shown to the dead.
The retired printworker, 85, told The Telegraph: “I’m very proud of my uncle. I have sympathy for the Palestinian people and I think they are probably having a very raw deal under Hamas. But this is terrorism, it isn’t democracy.
“At the very least, Hamas should have respect for the dead – especially fallen soldiers.”