Disciplining the Dead: Israel's Necropolitics in Palestine
“At least the rain is ours; they cannot take that away.”
Last month, Synergy visited the West Bank and conducted a series of stakeholder consultations with civil society organisations, UN agencies, the Palestinian judiciary and national human rights institution, and governmental donors, to learn how we can best support human rights and justice for Palestinians. We have watched in horror, with the rest of the world, as Israel has conducted a genocide in Gaza, but that is only part of the gross human rights violations that have been perpetrated on Palestinians by the Israeli government over the past 76 years. We seek to highlight these injustices and support the incredible actors on the ground as they document violations, support survivors, and demand justice.
The experience of entering a country that is illegally and militarily occupied by a colonial regime that unapologetically administers it as an apartheid state was shocking and depressing. Many human rights organisations, activists, and journalists have documented the situation accurately and comprehensively, and while I never doubted their words, seeing and hearing the outright discrimination, bullying, and abuse that is heaped on Palestinian people, is something that burned into my brain.
I took pages and pages of notes from our many hours of meetings – too much to convey in a blog post – but I wanted to take the opportunity to elevate some of the key issues and work being done by brave, smart, and committed actors on the ground. This will be the first in a series of blog posts dedicated to elevating the voices and concerns of the Palestinian people.
One of the darkest and shocking things I learned about in detail was Israel’s practice of withholding the bodies of Palestinian people who have been killed or died in Israeli custody, as well as the degrading requirements that Israel sets on the Palestinians in regard to holding funerals and burying their dead. The Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center (JLAC) has written an excellent publication “The Warmth of our Sons” that explains Israel’s implementation and legalisation of post-mortem punishment through the detention and degrading handling of Palestinian remains. The report notes that Israel is the only country in the world, besides Russia, whose primary legislation explicitly permits the withholding of bodies as part of its wider counterinsurgency program. It is also the only country in the world that relies on a complex - albeit ambiguous - legal framework for the withholding of bodies as a potential bargaining chip.
The report, written by Budour Hassan, with a compelling preface by Dr. Diana Buttu, introduces the concept of “necropolitics”, something I was previously unfamiliar with. Necropolitics – the withholding of the bodies of Palestinians killed by Israel – “are the attempts to control not only Palestinian life, but Palestinian death and mourning…not simply another element of control over Palestinian lives, but a continuation of settler-colonial practices that attempt to erase our very presence.”
Buddour provides many examples of cases where Israel has refused to return bodies to families, holds them for unduly long and unnecessary periods of time, mishandles remains, and dumps bodies in large cemeteries lacking adequate marking and separation so that they may be exhumed for DNA testing. “Their detention [the remains] in the police morgues is carried out in humiliating and inhumane conditions, in which the bodies are treated negligently and frozen into blackened blocks of ice, deforming them to the extent that families can hardly recognize them when they finally received them after months of negotiation.”
Additionally, the report outlines the severe restrictions under which Palestinians must hold funerals when they do eventually receive a body. “As a condition for receiving the bodies of their loved ones, families were required to provide monetary guarantees that the funeral processions will be attended by an extremely limited number of relatives, that the funeral will be held at night, and that no political slogans will be expressed. Some Jerusalem families were also ordered to conduct the burial in a place other than the family’s cemetery.”
Buddour notes that “By restricting the number of participants in funerals, by delaying these funerals through the lengthy withholding of corpses, and by fining families who fail to guarantee that only a certain number of people may participate in the funeral, Israel seeks to deny Palestinians the opportunity to express collective open grieving, thus suppressing the political potential it contains.”
I strongly encourage everyone to read this report, which provides far more detail and compelling analysis than space permits here. JLAC is doing incredible work across a broad spectrum and has achieved many successes despite the extremely challenging circumstances. Check out their website for access to excellent publications and fact sheets.
Information received directly from actors on the ground who are living through the violations and supporting victims is invaluable, and we are grateful to JLAC and all the civil society members who generously spent time with us. As we were leaving the West Bank, it started to rain and our Palestinian driver said, “At least the rain is ours; they can’t take that away.” That off-hand comment put into perspective just how much Palestinians endure, in life and in death, Israel’s constant stripping of their rights; and yet how they continue to find hope daily to exist and survive under a military occupation.
Please share this blog and keep talking and reading about Palestine. Next time, we’ll share more perspectives, voices, and issues from the West Bank.