Israeli army unit linked to Palestinian-American's death exits West Bank until end of next year

The Israeli military said on Wednesday it is temporarily removing a unit of ultra-Orthodox soldiers out of the occupied West Bank after a 78-year-old Palestinian American man died following an arrest by its soldiers early this year.

The army said the Netzah Yehuda Battalion will be moved to the Golan Heights, Syrian territory occupied by Israel, by the end of the year.

The announcement made no mention of the death of Omar Asaad, who died after being detained, handcuffed and blindfolded by Israeli soldiers.

Instead, it said the decision "was made out of a desire to diversify their operational deployment in multiple areas, in addition to accumulating more operational experience".

It said the unit would return to the West Bank at the end of next year.

Netzah Yehuda, or "Judea Forever", is a special unit for ultra-Orthodox Jewish soldiers.

The unit was formed to encourage religious Jews, who often receive special exemptions from compulsory military service, to join the army.

But its members have been implicated in past cases of abuse.

In January, troops from Netzah Yehuda detained Asaad at a checkpoint, binding his hands and blindfolding him.

Troops then unbound his hands and left him face-down in an abandoned building.

Asaad, who had lived in the US for four decades, was pronounced dead at a hospital after other Palestinians found him unconscious.

"According to security cameras in the area, Israeli soldiers forced him out of the car, beat him, handcuffed him and dragged him for some 200 metres, to the location he was found at," Fouad Qattoum, the mayor of Jiljeliyeh, the village where Asaad was found, said at the time.

In January, eighty-year-old Omar Asaad was found dead in an abandoned house where Israeli forces detained him after beating, handcuffing, and dragging him along the ground for some 200 metres.https://t.co/ONZoxl3yQI

— The New Arab (@The_NewArab) October 9, 2022

It was unclear when exactly he died. A post-mortem examination undertaken by Palestinian doctors found Asaad suffered from underlying health conditions, but also found bruises on his head, redness on his wrists from being bound and bleeding in his eyelids from being tightly blindfolded.

After an outcry from the US government, the Israeli military said the incident "was a grave and unfortunate event, resulting from moral failure and poor decision-making on the part of the soldiers".

It said one officer was reprimanded and two other officers reassigned to non-commanding roles over the incident.