A Palestinian family in the occupied West Bank says Israeli settlers forced it to dig up and rebury the body of 80-year-old Hussein Asasa after his first burial on Friday in a cemetery in Asasa village near Jenin. The family said the burial had been coordinated in advance with Israeli security forces and that all required permits had been provided.
Mohammed Asasa said settlers threatened the family shortly after the burial and ordered them to exhume the body, claiming the grave had been dug on land that formed part of an Israeli settlement. The family said it was told burial was not allowed because the land was for settlement, and complied after settlers threatened to use a bulldozer to remove the body themselves.
He said the settlers had already dug into the grave and reached the body before the family moved it. “They said the land was for settlement and that burial was not allowed. We told them that this is the village’s cemetery, not part of the settlement,” he said. “We found that they [the settlers] already dug the grave and reached the body,” he added. “We continued digging and got the body and buried him in another cemetery.”
Israeli soldiers were present during the confrontation, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa. The Israeli military denied giving the family instructions to rebury Asasa, saying soldiers were sent after reports of a confrontation involving settlers. It said troops confiscated digging tools from the settlers and remained at the scene to prevent further friction.
The episode drew a sharp rebuke from the UN Human Rights Office, which condemned the incident. Ajith Sunghay called it “appalling and emblematic of the dehumanisation of Palestinians that we see unfolding across the OPT (Occupied Palestinian Territories). It spares no one, dead or alive,” he said. The confrontation came as settler attacks have surged since Israel launched its war on Palestinians in Gaza in October 2023, and on Friday settlers carried out several attacks across the occupied West Bank, including attacking a child and setting homes and cars ablaze.
The burial dispute also fits into a broader legal and political fight over land in the occupied West Bank, where settlements are considered illegal under international law and are not recognised as Israeli territory. In February, Amnesty International warned that global impunity was fuelling Israel’s illegal annexation of the occupied West Bank. For the Asasa family, though, the issue was immediate and brutal: a father laid to rest, then dug up again under threat, and buried a second time before the day was over.
