SA’IR, WEST BANK – A widespread sense of anger and frustration was palpable as more than 10,000 people gathered on Feb. 25 in the West Bank town of Sa’ir, near Hebron, for the funeral of 30-year-old Arafat Jaradat, who had died two days earlier in an Israeli prison.

“Everyone is surprised about what happened,” Jaradat’s cousin Aded told Al-Monitor shortly before the funeral procession reached the local cemetery. “All the village is like his family. We are angry. [This shows that] anyone can come back as a martyr.” The father of two young children, Jaradat died on Feb. 23 in Israel’s Megiddo prison after five days behind bars. Israeli authorities arrested him last week on suspicion of stone throwing.

“I thought that it would be like what normally happens: he was arrested, but he would come back,” said 23-year-old Sa’ir resident Faris Qawasme, standing near the town’s central square the morning of the funeral. “Every day the army comes to the village,” Qawasme told Al-Monitor, explaining that Israeli authorities had detained 39 people from the village the same week Jaradat was arrested.

The Israeli security services first said that Jaradat had died from cardiac arrest and that before his imprisonment he suffered from health problems, including back pains and injuries to his stomach and legs. Jaradat’s family has stressed, however, that he was in good health before his arrest. After an autopsy conducted on Feb. 24, the Palestinian Authority (PA) announced that Jaradat had been killed as a result of torture during his interrogation by the Israelis and called for an independent, international investigation into his death. The Israeli Ministry of Health maintains that the exact cause of Jaradat’s death remains unknown.