RAMALLAH, West Bank — Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank dug up the grave of an elderly Palestinian man on Friday and forced his family to remove his body from the cemetery where he had been laid to rest.
The United Nations Human Rights Office for the occupied Palestinian territory called the incident a "despicable" example of the "new level of dehumanization of Palestinians that is happening in the occupied West Bank."
A video filmed at the scene shows the relatives of deceased Hussein Asasa quickly carrying his body — wrapped in a white shroud — away from the cemetery, where settlers, armed with weapons and spades, had opened his grave.
"The settlers told us: 'Either you take the dead body away right now or we'll use a bulldozer to remove him from the grave and dump him for you,'" Mohammed Asasa said of the attack on his father's burial site.
He spoke with NPR by phone from a tent outside his home, where he was receiving mourners who had come to pay their respects.
Asasa said his family has buried their dead in the cemetery of Asasa village, located south of Jenin in the occupied West Bank, for generations.
Then last year Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government decided to allow the return of a settlement to the area that had been evacuated under an Israeli disengagement plan in 2005. Now Israelis live in a settlement called Sa-Nur, located some 300 meters from the Asasa village cemetery.
When the settlers returned, Asasa said his family was told they would now need to obtain permits from the Israeli military to access the cemetery if they wanted to visit their relatives' graves or bury their dead.
So, when Hussein Asasa died, that's what the family did. The elder Asasa was about 85 years old, according to his son. The Israeli military confirmed to NPR that the Asasas had coordinated the burial in advance with security forces.
Asasa said the family was given 30 minutes on Friday to lay his father to rest. He said the settlers protested, saying the grave was too close to the settlement. And throughout the funeral the settlers "shouted and heckled."
"We buried my father and went away," he said. But only a few minutes later, villagers came to warn Asasa that the settlers were interfering with his father's grave.
"We ran back to the cemetery. We couldn't believe what was happening," Asasa said.
The settlers were digging out the grave and had reached his father's body.
Asasa said Israeli soldiers were present at the site, but did not force the settlers to leave. He shared a video from the scene in which Israeli soldiers stand beside the settlers, looking on as Asasa and his relatives remove the last of the earth in this forced exhumation.
The Israeli military told NPR its soldiers confiscated digging tools from the settlers and remained at the site to "prevent further friction." It added that it condemns actions that violate the "dignity of the living and the deceased."
The Israeli military did not, however, respond to NPR's specific question about why — since the Asasa family had obtained the necessary permit — the soldiers had not intervened to send the settlers away and help Asasa keep his father in his place of rest.
Ajith Sunghay, the head of the United Nations Human Rights Office for the occupied Palestinian territory, called this an example of the "constant failure" of the Israeli military's obligation under international law to protect Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
Since the Hamas-led attack on Israel from Gaza in October 2023, there has been a drastic increase in the number of attacks on Palestinians by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank. The Israeli government has also accelerated settlement building, and settlers or soldiers who commit violence against Palestinians are rarely prosecuted.
Sunghay told NPR that during attacks by Israeli settlers, "by and large, what we have seen is that the Israeli military either stays idle, or in fact, in many cases, takes the side of Israeli settlers."
Mohammed Asasa told NPR that they were without recourse for help. He said that the Asasa family had been left with no choice but to bow to the settler's demands and carry his father's body away.
They laid Hussein Asasa to rest in a cemetery in a nearby town.
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