Israel now turns to bombing cemeteries. Even the dead cannot rest. (File photo)
Gaza City, November 19 (RHC)-- A Palestinian man posted on X, formerly Twitter, late on Saturday, after the Israeli regime warplanes rained bombs on the city cemetery of Deir al-Balah, 20 kilometers south-west of Gaza.
“Israel doesn't even want you to have the luxury of having your family visit your grave,” wrote another social media user, denouncing the bombing of the historic cemetery.
The bombing of the graveyard, which has in recent weeks taken hundreds of victims of the Israeli bombing campaign, including women and children, came on Friday, according to local eyewitnesses.
The Israeli warplanes have since October 7 indiscriminately targeted the densely-populated territory, not even sparing hospitals, schools, ambulances, water pipes, solar panels and residential houses.
“What’s left? Bombing the cemeteries so they can't even bury their dead,” asked a netizen.
Deir al-Balah has in recent days reported a shortage of space as bodies keep piling up amid the unrelenting Israeli attacks across the territory, making the struggle for survival real for locals.
Saadi Al Hasan Al Sulaiman, a gravedigger at Deir al-Balah, was quoted as saying last week that he buried 137 bodies in a random mass grave on a single day as the cemetery reached its maximum capacity. “In a small space of six meters, I had to bury 45 bodies,” said the 63-year-old man. “I have never buried so many bodies in my whole life.”
It is not the first time that the occupying regime has attacked cemeteries in the besieged territory. In the Israeli aggression on Gaza in May, bombs were dropped on Beit Lahiya cemetery, where hundreds of Palestinians killed by the regime have been buried over the years.
Most of the tombstones were completely or partially destroyed as the footage later revealed. In August last year, five Palestinian children were killed in an airstrike on the Fallujah cemetery in the town of Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip, the Israeli media reported at the time.
The slain children were identified as Jamil Al-Din Nijm, 3, Jamil Ihab Nijm, 13, Mohammad Salah Nijm, 16, Hamed Haidar Nijm, 16, and Nathmi Abu Karsh, 15. In June 2021, the Palestinian Religious Endowments Ministry identified six cemeteries of Al-Tunisi, Ali bin Marwan, Sheikh Shaban, Al-Sifa, Jabalia Al-Balad, and Al-Far that were damaged by Israeli attacks.
"I don't know why the dead were targeted in their graves and what their fault is,” Khaled Nasrallah, a guard at the Al-Tunisi cemetery, was quoted as saying at the time.
However, observers say that the desperation to target both the living and the dead - from hospitals to cemeteries - shows how the illegitimate regime seeks to depopulate the territory and eliminate the resistance. But, as one Palestinian activist asserted, Gaza "will be a graveyard of the Israeli regime."
