The ongoing Israeli airstrikes in Gaza are not only taking the lives of Palestinians, but also robbing them of the opportunity to hold proper funerals and find closure. Mourners are unable to perform traditional funeral rites and are facing difficulties in communicating with the outside world to seek help or information about their loved ones.
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — It was neither the place nor the time for a proper goodbye, said Omar Dirawi. Not here, in this dusty field strewn with dead people wrapped in blankets and zipped up in body bags. And not now, as Israeli airstrikes crashed around him for the third week, erasing more of his neighborhood and sundering hundreds of families and friendships.
Palestinians say this war is robbing them not only of their loved ones but also of the funeral rites that long have offered mourners some dignity and closure in the midst of unbearable grief. Israeli strikes. A few in Gaza who managed to communicate with the outside world said people could no longer call ambulances or find out if loved ones living in different buildings were still alive.. Of the dead, it added, nearly 300 have not been identified.
Al-Hour's brother, Nour, exhumed his family's old plots in the local cemetery Friday to place the newly deceased inside. His hands dark with grave dirt, he became breathless listing each relative being lowered into the ground.“There's Bilal’s son with his wife and children, his other younger son and of course his daughter who finished high school last year and was supposed to be a doctor,” he said before trailing off and quoting the Quran.
In some cases, bodies have decomposed so much they are unrecognizable even to their kin. In other cases, not a single family member may survive to claim the dead.“We often find this during our work, even just night in Gaza City when 200 people were killed, there were names and ID numbers written in ink on the children's bodies,” said Mahmoud Basal, spokesperson of the Palestinian Civil Defense. “It's a pain I can't describe, to see that.
Residents of Nuseirat peered into dozens of blood-smeared body bags arranged outside Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital on Thursday, searching for familiar faces, Abdou said. Workers labeled some body bags “unknown" before shoveling them into mass graves.When trying to sleep, Abdou said he hears sounds from that night — the thunder of the blast mixing with screams of shock and the cries of children.
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