Almost half of the
Gaza Strip is a no-go area shelled by Israeli ground forces during almost three
weeks of fighting, sending not just the living but the dead in
search of a safe place to rest.
Many graveyards - along with whole neighborhoods once home
to hundreds of thousands of people - are too dangerous to
approach, pushing some families to cram their dead among the
more than 800 killed by the bombs into old, or occupied, graves
closer to safety.
A sign outside the Martyrs' Cemetery in northern Gaza warned
that it was full, like many in the crowded coastal Strip, but
that didn't stop the funeral processions from coming.
Grave diggers said they had resorted to burying two people
in the space of one, or opening up old family plots, sweeping
the bones of their occupants to one side and adding a new body.
"In normal situations people will go to the other martyrs'
cemetery in the North or bury their dead in separate graves. But
nothing is normal these days," said Abu Bilal, a grave digger.
Wiping the sweat from his brow with his forearm, he gestured
with his dirty hands and complained that though he had buried
hundreds of war victims, working with slain children still left
him jarred.
"Death is tough, but I can't act normal when I bury a child
killed by an Israeli missile. The image of his, or her, innocent
smile doesn't leave my memory so easily," the father of five
told Reuters.
Gaza medics say more than 800 Palestinians, most of them
civilians including more than 100 children, have been killed.
MOURNERS ARRIVE
Israel says it takes pains to avoid civilian casualties and
has warned residents in border areas to flee a ground thrust
aimed at destroying militants' cross-border attack tunnels.
Israel has lost 33 soldiers in the fighting and 3 civilians.
Though gatherings attract the attention of the omnipresent
Israeli drones which consider open spaces potential rocket
launch sites, Ali Hassan and a small group of mourners arrived
anyway.
The young man being buried was killed in an Israeli air
strike on his family home in central Gaza on Wednesday. The
surviving occupants of the house fled, leaving rescue crews
working for two days to pull his remains out of the rubble.
"Not only has Israel displaced the living and forced them to
seek shelter, our dead cannot be buried in separate graves. They
have to be sheltered with corpses of relatives," Hassan said.
More than 150,000 people have fled to United Nations
refuges, including a school that was shelled on Friday, killing
15 people. Countless others have moved in with relatives.
Islamic precepts mandate single graves for the dead, thought
there are exceptions for wartime and incidents of mass death.
But where religion forgives, the Israeli-Egyptian blockade
grinding Gaza's economy does not: cement needed to cover the
graves is in short supply, sending the price of a simple burial
up by a quarter to around $160 for the increasingly impoverished
residents.
"We have no time to rest, dead or alive," said Hassan glumly
as he shook hands with well-wishers.
REUTERS