Mourning as resistance: Israel’s necropolitics from Palestine to Lebanon

Mourning is not just a personal experience, it is also a social and cultural practice, embedded in collective rituals that provide closure and reaffirm identity. In contexts of colonial domination, however, even this basic human act is weaponized. In the case of Palestine, the Israeli occupation has systematically interfered with the right to mourn. Funerals are frequently subjected to state violence, cemeteries have been demolished or repurposed, and the bodies of Palestinians killed are often withheld from their families. These practices transform mourning into a space of control and repression, denying individuals and communities the ability to grieve according to their cultural and religious traditions.

Total control over bodies

The concept of “necropolitics”, theorized by the Cameroonian historian and political scientist Achille Mbembe, distinguishes two levels of decision-making in colonial power linked to the right to life and death: that of deciding who can live and who must die, but also that of shaping the conditions in which death occurs¹. The researcher draws primarily on the French colonial occupation of Cameroon and the apartheid regime in South Africa, two contexts in which the state exercised total control over bodies, burials, territories and the right to mourn. He speaks of “death worlds”: spaces where entire populations are subjected to permanent violence, stripped of legal protection and dehumanized.

Achille Mbembe identifies the West Bank as a contemporary expression of this logic: a territory fragmented by military checkpoints, dominated by constant surveillance and imposed precariousness, where state control is achieved as much by lethal force as by bureaucratic violence. In this context, funerals, graves and even the possession of bodies become a threat to the oppressor, because they bring people together, reinforce collective identity and enable intergenerational memory to be passed on. Here, mourning is not merely psychological; it becomes a political act of resistance.

It is in this condition that the denial of burial becomes especially significant - because controlling the dead is another way of suppressing resistance.

Graves desecrated, cemeteries appropriated

Israel is not just killing Palestinians. It is also waging a war against their memory. In January 2024, in Gaza, Israeli forces bulldozed the Al-Namsawi cemetery in Khan Younes, reducing it to dust. Since 7 October 2023, Israel has destroyed at least sixteen cemeteries in Gaza, according to a CNN investigation in January 2024². This destruction is part of a long-standing campaign to erase the Palestinians’ presence from their land.

In Jerusalem, where the Israeli authorities are systematically working to eliminate Arab and Islamic heritage, cemeteries have become a repeated target in a broader effort to “Israelise” the city. According to Al-Jazeera, in 2017, Israeli bulldozers razed part of the Martyrs’ Cemetery, near the Lion’s Gate, where more than 400 Palestinian fighters who defended Jerusalem in 1967 were buried. Their remains were displaced and their graves destroyed to make way for the construction of a biblical national park.

This logic of erasure has been extended to other cemeteries, such as Maaman Allah in West Jerusalem and, in 2021, Al-Youssoufiah in East Jerusalem, which have also been destroyed, desecrated and converted into parks, roads and tourist areas controlled by Israel³. The Maaman Allah (Mamilla) cemetery, one of the most important Muslim burial places in Jerusalem, dating back to the 7^th Century and holding the remains of Hieronymous Muslims, has been systematically desecrated in recent decades. The Simon Wiesenthal Centre’s Museum of Tolerance, which took more than twenty years to build, was constructed on a plot of the cemetery. Inaugurated in 2023, the 17,500-square-meter building is four times larger than the Shoah Memorial in Jerusalem. Work, which is still in progress, has since spawned a café, hotel, garden and swimming pool on another part of the cemetery. The area has also been transformed by the construction of the upmarket Mamilla Mall and other commercial projects.

These attacks on cemeteries reflect a wider Israeli policy that extends across the occupied West Bank. In March 2023, on a Friday, Israeli occupation authorities issued demolition orders for seven graves in Al-Burj, southwest of Al-Khalil (Hebron). Throughout the occupied West Bank, Israeli settlers and occupation forces repeatedly target Palestinian cemeteries, desecrating burial sites in a pattern that reflects the broader destruction of Palestinian homes, schools, and infrastructures. Behind these actions lies a clear logic : to impose demographic control and thereby strengthen Israeli domination over Palestinian land, history and collective memory..

Yet these assaults on the dead and their memory is only one side of the strategy - Israel’s repression extends to the very process of mourning itself.

Funeral services, a political moment

In Palestine and throughout the region, funeral processions are not simply moments of mourning: they are powerful expressions of political continuity and collective identity. In contexts where movement is restricted and public gatherings are closely monitored and criminalized, funerals remain one of the few spaces where mass mobilization is still possible. They thus become moments where personal mourning intersects with the national struggle. In this context, the funeral space is never limited to the individual; it is fundamentally political. Since the first intifada, Israel has responded to these gatherings with force. Mass funerals, particularly those honoring victims of Israeli forces, become moments of direct political expression. The songs and flags are also a refusal to normalize occupation, to forget the dead or to dissociate death from its political origin. Israel’s repression of funerals is part of a broader strategy to control the social and symbolic infrastructure of the resistance. This is why funeral processions have become a new front in the repression. Bereaved families who have come to bury their loved ones are regularly targeted with violence, including tear gas, beatings and rubber bullets. Coffin bearers are not spared. In June 2023, in Beit Ommar, north of Al-Khalil, a procession on its way to the local cemetery was violently intercepted by Israeli forces deployed at the entrance to the town, who blocked access, turning what should have been a solemn farewell into yet another episode of repression.

A year earlier, in May 2022, during the funeral of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh who was shot in the head while covering an Israeli raid in the West Bank, the procession was attacked. Ahead of the procession, the authorities attempted to ban Palestinian flags and put pressure on the family. As mourners carried her coffin through Jerusalem, Israeli police attacked the people, nearly causing them to drop it, in a scene that shocked the world. Already a devastating loss for Palestinians, her assassination was followed by an attempt to deny her even the dignity of a proper farewell. The attack was a clear message: even grief is not allowed when it strengthens Palestinian identity and unites the people.

The same logic was deployed recently in Lebanon. On February 23, a mass national funeral was held in Beirut, where hundreds of thousands of people gathered to mourn Hezbollah leaders Hassan Nasrallah and Hashem Safieddine. As mourners filled the streets, Israeli drones hovered above, jets streaked over the location, and reports emerged that Israel had considered striking the funeral itself. According to Israeli television Channel 14, reporting on comments made by former Chief of Staff Herzl Halevi, the army was considering attacking the event. The sheer scale of the processions was a powerful statement: despite months of Israeli bombing that had devastated Lebanon’s infrastructure and displaced thousands of civilians, popular support for Hezbollah remained strong. The gathering of nearly a million people in the heart of Beirut, despite threats of further strikes, was seen as a form of resistance and steadfastness. It was seen as a direct challenge by Israel, further provoking its aggression.

That same day, in direct violation of the ceasefire, Israel launched one of its deadliest bombing campaigns in southern Lebanon. The airstrikes, deliberately timed to coincide with the funeral, were a reminder that even grief is dictated by Israel. The goal was clear: to suppress resilience, provoke a military response, and reinforce the conclusion that no agreement guarantees safety - not in Palestine, and not in Lebanon.

Body confiscation

Israel enforces an even more extreme measure to control mourning: withholding the bodies of people it kills. In fact, Israel has systematically implemented a policy of body confiscation, refusing to return the remains of slain Palestinians and Lebanese to their families. Israel officially justifies the withholding bodies as a “deterrent measure”, aiming to prevent funerals.

This policy was publicly formulated following the 2015 “lone wolf intifada” (also called the “knife intifada”) during which young Palestinians carried out sporadic attacks against Israeli soldiers and settlers. The Israeli High Court of justice⁴then authorized the State to keep the bodies as bargaining chips in any negotiations with armed factions.

According to the Palestinian NGO Al-Haq⁵, the Israeli occupation has a long history of systematically concealing the fate of the Palestinians it kills, using enforced disappearances and secret burial sites known as ‘number cemeteries’, where the headstones of the graves bear only numbers. A form of collective punishment for bereaved families.

One of the most symbolic cases is that of Ahmad Erakat, a 27-year-old Palestinian man killed by Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint near Bethlehem in 2020. Israeli authorities withheld his body for over ten weeks, denying his family the right to a timely and dignified burial. A more recent example is that of Mohammad Ghassan Khader Abed, a 16-year-old boy killed by Israeli forces in February 2025 in the Nour Shams refugee camp. His body was also confiscated.

The NGO National Campaign to Retrieve Martyrs’ Bodies reports that the Israeli occupation continues to withhold the bodies of 665 Palestinians, many of whom have been held for decades in morgues or buried in the “cemeteries of numbers”. Some of these bodies have been in Israeli custody since the 1960s and 1970s. Notably, this number does not include additional bodies currently being withheld from citizens of the Gaza Strip, as it’s not possible to have accurate information about them.

Selective empathy

The assault on Shireen Abu Akleh’s funeral received worldwide attention. The outrage was immediate: the attack was described as “regrettable” by the United States and “deeply disturbing” by the United Nations. But it was treated as a simple use of excessive force and, above all, no action was taken. No consequences. No accountability.

Nothing of the sort happened when Hamas returned the bodies of the Bibas family in February 2025. The Palestinian movement staged the return to Israel of four coffins containing the bodies of the hostages kidnapped on 7 October 2023. A stage surrounded by cameras and journalists was set up in a public square in Gaza. Behind the stage, a banner pointed to Benyamin Netanyahu as being responsible for their deaths. Many Western media outlets were outraged by this staging, described as one of the worst days experienced by Israelis since 7 October 2023. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights described the handover of the bodies as “abject and cruel”. The emotional reaction was immediate, massive and unambiguous.

This disparity in reactions underscores a selective empathy shaped by geopolitical interests. Israeli narratives, even if not accurate, always receive immediate global solidarity, while Palestinian experiences of loss and violence are frequently met with muted responses or framed within security paradigms that justify Israeli actions. As journalist Cecilia Dalla Negra discusses in Orient XXI [reference needed], the language used in Western media plays a crucial role in shaping public perception of Palestine, and global empathy. The “complexity” of the Palestinian question is emphasized to create distance, depoliticize Palestinian suffering, and diminish accountability. This supposed complexity serves to paralyze actions and opinions, suggesting that Palestinian suffering is somehow ambiguous or self-inflicted. This framing contributes to the dehumanization of Palestinian experiences, where their grief and resistance are minimized, dismissed, or ignored.

This narrative asymmetry fuels impunity, ensuring that Israeli actions are never truly held to account.