which was ravaged by military bulldozers that uprooted graves and exhumed the bodies of martyrs — all amid deafening international silence.
He added, “We no longer have graves, or even enough open space to bury the victims. We resorted to using public hospital courtyards as a last resort, turning hospital yards into temporary cemeteries but even those are no longer enough.”
Temporary cemeteries, permanent humiliation
The only cemetery established during the war to absorb the rising number of martyrs didn’t last long. Within just a few months, it became a final refuge — then closed to the dead after reaching full capacity. Its closure wasn’t just an administrative decision, but a declaration of the defeat of human dignity in the face of repeated death.
Those who couldn’t be buried in temporary cemeteries were left exposed — the sun beating down on the martyrs’ faces as their families raised their hands to the sky, unable to secure even one square meter of land in their homeland for their loved ones’ bodies.
Digging up graves and stealing corpses: A crime upon a crime
The Gaza Government Media Office documented that Israeli forces had exhumed over 2,000 graves in 13 different cemeteries, stealing no fewer than 300 bodies — a blatant violation of international law and religious codes, all of which criminalize the desecration of the dead.
The fate of those stolen bodies remains unknown — a chilling chapter of systematic crime, where the killing of life extends to shattering even the memory of the dead buried beneath the earth.
A cry from under the rubble: Where is the dignity?
It’s not only Khan Yunis — the entire Gaza Strip groans under the weight of a compounded catastrophe. No water. No electricity. No medicine. And now — no graves.
Where is dignity buried when a martyr is left under the sun? Where are prayers recited when the bodies are stolen? And where does the conscience of the world stand in the face of a crime committed twice — against the living and the dead?
Death is not the end… forgetting is
What is happening in Gaza’s cemeteries is not merely a burial crisis — it is a total collapse of the very foundations of human dignity. The martyr, who died defending his land and rights, now finds no patch of earth to embrace his body, no soil to grant him final peace.
In Gaza, the dead are still waiting — in long lines under the sun, in makeshift cemeteries, and in the hearts of their loved ones who found no graves, and turned their grief into a burning ember that never dies down.
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