As Palestinians find some respite in the midst of a ceasefire in Gaza, many families have one important job to do before returning back to their homes: giving their loved ones, many of whom were buried in mass or temporary graves, a proper burial.
Tareq S. Hajjaj, January 25, 2025
Since the ceasefire began in the Gaza Strip people have had a little respite from the daily killing, but the tragedies have not ended. Instead, new tragedies and modes of suffering have surfaced for the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip.
During the war, thousands of dead were buried in temporary graves in different places in the Gaza Strip as people were unable to reach the official cemeteries and because of the large number of martyrs. This led people in Gaza to establish temporary graves to bury their beloved dead, with the hope they could transfer them to permanent graves later.
People buried thousands of bodies in residential neighborhoods, yards, roads, playgrounds, hospital grounds, schools, mosques, agricultural lands, and even public intersections. In the meantime, their families have been waiting for a ceasefire in order to transfer them to their final resting place.
According to the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, more than 120 mass graves have been created in the Gaza Strip since October 2023. Mass graves are defined as graves in which three or more individuals have been buried together. The organization notes that the situation has only gotten worse as the Israeli army continuously targets individuals trying to reach the cemeteries to bury their relatives.
During the war, people buried the dead wherever they could find empty places without preparing graves as they usually would with stones and covering the deceased inside. Instead, people simply dug holes in the ground, put their dead in large plastic bags, and piled ground directly over them.
In the first days of the ceasefire, many residents who had been displaced to the south and had buried their loved ones in temporary graves began moving their dead to official cemeteries in areas such as Al-Zawaida and Nuseirat. Families wanted to put their dead in final graves to give closure, and many families are still waiting to take their dead with them to Gaza City and bury them in the city’s established cemeteries.
Near the European Hospital in Khan Younis, people created a temporary cemetery that could hold more than 150 graves, all buried just under the ground. Following the ceasefire, families have been digging up their dead loved ones from these mass graves, and moving them to proper cemeteries in southern Gaza.
Adham Shallah, 35, is from the Shuja’iyya neighborhood in Gaza City and during the war had been displaced to the area near the European Hospital in Khan Younis. His father had been injured and hospitalized for weeks before he died. The family buried him in the temporary cemetery near the hospital. After the ceasefire, he dug up his father again, pulled him out of the ground, and reburied him. He described the process as repeating the day his father died.
‘It’s just like the day we buried him the first time, except that this time, we’re digging him out from under the ground. It’s painful to do this, but we don’t have any other options. War might break out again if we go back to northern Gaza, and then we won’t be able to move him. This is a good opportunity to move his body to a final grave in an official cemetery,’ Shallah told Mondoweiss.
As can be expected, families who were forced to bury their loved ones in makeshift temporary graves experienced great psychological pain, even if they were eventually able to move their relatives. ‘Even the dead suffered during the war,’ Shallah says. ‘We buried them in the sand without giving them a proper burial. We had no other choice. We were afraid that dogs would dig them up, tear them apart and eat them because we had heard stories about graves that dogs had dug up.’
Shallah expressed his relief at burying his father in his final resting place and moving him from the temporary mass grave to a permanent cemetery.
He was also relieved that the Israeli army did not bulldoze the graveyard as they had many others.
‘We knew that the Israeli army bulldozed temporary graves, just as they did inside al-Shifa Hospital when they first stormed it and bulldozed the graves there. The cemetery where my father was buried was next to the Gaza European Hospital. We were always afraid, especially after the hospital was warned to evacuate, that the Israeli bulldozers would bulldoze the cemetery. Then we would not be able to find my father’s remains, and there would be no grave for his loved ones who wanted to visit him and pray for him.’
‘The options that the occupation gives us in the Gaza Strip are very few; they are not suitable for the living or the dead,’ says Shallah.
Shallah and his brothers transferred their father to the Al-Sawarha Cemetery in Nuseirat, a cemetery affiliated with the Palestinian Ministry of Endowments. The family does not intend to move him again, as they feel they have fulfilled their duty to bury their father in a suitable grave. However, not all families have done the same thing. Some families are still waiting for the possibility of returning to Gaza City and then burying their relatives closer to their homes, as it might not be easy to return south to visit a gravesite. Some of them also think that the deceased will be more comfortable near their family.
Mazen Obaid, 41, whose father was buried in the same makeshift grave next to the European Hospital, does not want to move his father more than once. He wants to bury him in Gaza City, near their home in the Al-Sha’af area east of Gaza City.
He has kept his father in a temporary grave, although many of his displaced neighbors advised him to move his body during this period of calm into a cemetery in the south. Still, he refuses to bury his father in the southern Gaza Strip, as they have no relatives in the area.
‘I have lived my entire life here and have only come to the southern Gaza Strip a few times for specific purposes. Our entire lives are in Gaza City, with our relatives, neighbors, and people we know. My father has six married sons who also have married sons. Why should we deprive my father of these visits and his brothers, sisters, and their children? We all live in Gaza, and we will return to Gaza, and we will take everything with us, even our dead father,’ Obaid insists.
In Gaza City, people still keep some of their dead in the same temporary graves, waiting for the final withdrawal of the Israeli army so they can go to the largest cemetery in Gaza City, which is located east of Gaza City along the barrier with Israel. However, people inside the city still cannot go to those areas.
Bilal al-Harkali, 30, is from Gaza City, and his father and brother were killed in a bombing in the city. They were both buried in the courtyard of his grandmother’s house in Gaza City, and he does not know which cemetery to move them to.
‘We cannot reach the cemetery where we buried all our relatives and neighbors, where the dead get along because they know each other. I will move my father to the cemetery where my grandfather and my previous family were buried, but now it is a perilous place,’ says al-Harkalil.
Al-Harkali has decided to keep his father in the yard of the house until the Israeli army withdraws, and he can go to the cemetery to prepare a grave. He says that the Israeli military is an obstacle to the dead and their graves.
‘As long as the situation is unstable, my father and brother will remain at rest in their temporary graves. When the army withdraws, I will eventually move them, but we do not want to disturb them anymore in their sleep.’