Israeli settlers stand on top of a mosque at Sa-Nur settlement the Israeli-occupied West Bank [Getty]
Extremist Israeli settlers on Friday forced Palestinians to exhume a body and move it to another location after they claimed it was buried too close to an Israeli settlement in the northern occupied West Bank.
The Times of Israel (TOI) said Israeli soldiers stood by and watched as this happened near the settlement of Sa-Nur, which was evacuated 20 years ago and officially reopened last month.
Despite the military acknowledging that the funeral had been coordinated in advance, settlers from Sa-Nur later arrived at the site with digging tools and forced the Palestinians to dig up the grave.
The Israeli military said it arrived at the scene after reports of tensions, adding that it confiscated the digging tools from the settlers “and remained at the location to prevent further friction,” according to TOI.
Footage shared online shows Palestinians moving the exhumed body, wrapped in a white cloth, as the soldiers and settlers look on.
It was not clear where the body of Hussein Asasa was later buried. The family said settlers threw stones at them as they moved his body.
The military claimed it would “investigate” the incident.
Ajith Sunghay, head of the UN Human Rights Office for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, said he was shocked at the incident.
“This is horrifying and embodies the dehumanisation of Palestinians that we are witnessing unfold across the entire Occupied Palestinian Territory without anyone being spared, neither the living nor the dead,” he said in a statement published on X.
“The cemetery sits 300 meters from Sa Nur settlement, re-established in 2025. Palestinians must now obtain Israeli permits to bury their dead there, as Hussein’s family had done that same morning.”
Israel’s Jewish settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law, and settler attacks have increasingly risen in the territory over the past few years.
Near-daily assaults have killed and injured scores of Palestinians, who often complained of settlers harassing them, torching their groves, attacking their homes and vehicles, and shooting at them.
