GENEVA JANUARY 2024
Since just days after the 7 October 2023 start of the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip,
Palestinians have been unable to reach the largest cemetery in the Strip, located on the northeastern border of Gaza. This cemetery was previously designated for burying the dead in Gaza City and the Strip’s northern areas. For weeks, Palestinians were forced to bury their dead in alternative, formerly closed cemeteries, until even these became unsafe for burial. Ahead of the ground invasion of the Jabalia refugee camp, Israeli warplanes bombed citizens who were digging graves in the Beit Lahia Cemetery, killing five civilians. This bombing coincided with intense artillery shelling of Al-Fallujah Cemetery, preventing residents from accessing Al-Fallujah or the bordering Al-Shuhada Cemetery, and forcing them to use random cemeteries.
As the Israel’s aggression intensified with the start of the Israeli ground incursion on 27 October 2023, hospitals and shelter centres were subjected to attacks and a complete siege.
Thus, every hospital and shelter centre became a potential site for a mass grave or temporary graves. This means that a sizable excavation may include many dead, or individual graves.
The most notable temporary and mass graves that have been observed are listed below:
15 October 2023: A cemetery was established to bury dozens of unidentified dead Palestinians in Gaza City after their bodies were piled up in the city’s Al-Shifa Medical Complex for several days.
22 October 2023: Al-Batsh Cemetery was established in the east of Gaza City to bury dozens of unidentified dead, after their bodies had accumulated for days inside the city’s Al-Shifa Medical Complex.
12-14 November 2023: 179 bodies were buried in a mass grave in the courtyard of Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Medical Complex. Days later, the Israeli occupation forces levelled the cemetery and stole the bodies.Mid-November 2023: A mass grave was established on land adjacent to the Indonesian Hospital in the Tal al-Zaatar neighbourhood, north of the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, as the Israeli siege on the hospital intensified. The cemetery contained approximately two hundred graves, and when the Israeli occupation army stormed the hospital, it exhumed some of its graves and stole a number of dead bodies.
18 November 2023: A cemetery was established next to Beit Lahia’s Indonesian Hospital in the Tal al-Zaatar neighbourhood, in the north of Jabalia Camp. The occupation forces raided it on 23 November, however, and stole the dead bodies. It was the first makeshift gravesite in the refugee camp, where bodies began to be buried during the Israeli siege of the Indonesian Hospital in mid-November of 2023. The cemetery contained approximately two hundred graves before it was stormed by the Israeli army, which stole multiple dead bodies.
21 November 2023: A cemetery was established in the Al-Zaytoun neighbourhood. Those buried in the cemetery include: Hamed Fares Ibrahim Shteiwi and his sons, Iyad and Firas; Wael Ahmed Fares Shteiwi and his son Fadi; Hamed Iyad Hamid Shteiwi and his daughter Hala; Ahmed Wael Ahmed Shteiwi; Muhammad Wael Ahmed Shteiwi; Rafiq Shteiwi; Riyad Rafiq Shteiwi and his daughter; and Muhammad Rafiq Shteiwi, all of whom were killed in Israeli raids two days earlier. Note that Fadi Ahmed Fares Shteiwi was buried in the cemetery on 26 November 2023, and Muhammad Wael Shteiwi on 30 November 2023.
22 November 2023: The Health Ministry in Gaza announced that 111 dead bodies from Gaza City’s northern areas were buried in a mass grave, west of Khan Yunis. 83 of the dead bodies were previously seized from Al-Shifa Medical Complex, while others were brought to the gravesite from Beit Hanoun Hospital.
November and December of 2023: At least two improvised cemeteries were established in Gaza City’s Daraj neighbourhood, each containing hundreds of bodies. Some of the dead were also buried close to their former homes, as it was impossible to reach any of the official or makeshift cemeteries due to the ongoing Israeli invasion. The first of the
improvised cemeteries was constructed on a 500-metre piec of land belonging to the Al Masry family in the middle of Al-Sahaba Street, close to the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Mosque; at least 150 corpses were buried there. The second was established on a 2,000-square-metre area on Al-Istiklal Street (Al-Qaws) near Al-Shabiyya Junction, where over 200 corpses were buried.
November and December of 2023: A cemetery was established on half an acre of land behind the Jabalia Police Station.November and December of 2023: Temporary mass graves were created at the majority of shelter schools in northern Gaza and Gaza City to bury those killed, as it was impossible to transport them to a hospital or an official cemetery.
November and December of 2023: The island located along Sultan Street in Block 2 in Jabalia Camp was turned into a cemetery to bury dead bodies.
December of 2023: Individual graves were established in Al-Qarara area, east of Khan Yunis, to bury martyrs.
5 December 2023: A cemetery was established inside the Al-Awda Market next to the Jabalia Camp Police Station, containing approximately 120 graves, after Israeli military
vehicles stormed the Al-Fallujah area and the Al-Q sasib neighbourhood.
7 December 2023: Munir Al-Bursh, the Gaza Strip’s Director-General of Health, declared that over 100 dead bodies were taken from the besieged Kamal Adwan Hospital and buried in a mass grave at Jabalia Market. Later, the Israeli army dug the grave up and stole many bodies.
9 December 2023: A mass grave was established in the market square of the Jabalia refugee camp, and in its alleys. Locals started burying their dead family members in the cemetery, in individual as well as shared graves.
11 December 2023: A mass grave was established within the walls of the Yemen Hospital in the centre of Jabalia Camp, which houses hundreds of displaced people as well as hospital patients; 44 graves were created.
25 December 2023: A cemetery of 28 graves was established in Al-Hadad Street, linking Jabalia Market on the southern side to the Sultan Street intersection.
26 December 2023: The Health Ministry announced that a mass grave had been established in Rafah in order to bury 80 bodies, which were handed over by the Israeli occupation after being confiscated in Gaza City for days.
28 December 2023: A mass grave was erected in the backyard of Jabalia Preparatory School in Jabalia Camp following the Israeli army’s siege of the school. The cemetery included more than 55 graves.During the Israeli invasion of Gaza’s neighbourhoods, medical and civil defense rescue operations were suspended. As a result, scores of dead bodies were buried next to their bombed homes.
Palestinian journalist Anas Al-Sharif, who works for Al-Jazeera Satellite Channel, told Anatolia News Agency that he was forced to bury his father, who was killed in an Israeli attack on his family’s house in Jabalia Camp, in the yard of a UNRWA-run school, as he was unable to reach a nearby cemetery.
Documented Israeli attacks on cemeteries, graves The Israeli army has targeted several cemeteries in the Gaza Strip.
Early December 2023: The Israeli army raided Al-Fallujah Cemetery in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip, vandalising graves and gravestones and stealing multiple bodies.
17–20 December 2023: The Israeli army raided the Sheikh Shaaban Cemetery in Gaza City’s Palestine Square area, bulldozing dozens of graves there and trampling over the dead bodies.
20 December 2023: Massive destruction was carried out in a cemetery situated approximately 1.7 kilometres east of the central area of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip. The Israeli bulldozing operations involved the destruction of graves across an area of approximately 2,500 square metres.
25 December 2023: Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor received several testimonies confirming that the Israeli army bulldozed the Beit Hanoun Cemetery in the northern Gaza Strip and vandalised its graves.
5 January 2024: Extensive bulldozing operations took place at Al-Batsh Cemetery, in the east of Gaza City. These operations involved the exhumation of graves, the trampling of dead bodies, and the dismembering of some of them with military vehicles. The cemetery was completely destroyed, with its graves dug up and looted where the majority of the bodies were removed and/or dismembered; several tombstones erected to identify the dead were reported missing. Al-Tuffah neighbourhood’s cemetery, east of Gaza City, was also raided by military vehicles; more than 1,000 graves were dug up, while more than 150 newly-buried corpses were taken from the cemetery.
According to Euro-Med Monitor field documentation, the Israeli army targeted the majority of cemeteries in the Gaza Strip, including Al-Fallujah Cemetery in the northern Gaza Strip; Ali bin Marwan, Sheikh Radwan, Al-Shuhada, and Sheikh Shaaban cemeteries; and the St. Porphyrius Church’s cemetery in Gaza City and Beit Lahia’s Al-Shuhada Cemetery in the north of the Gaza Strip, destroying dozens of graves in utter disregard for the sanctity of the dead. Large holes were created in these cemeteries as a result of the frequent attacks, engulfing dozens of graves. The remains of some dead bodies were found scattered or missing, while dozens of graves were seriously damaged.
The Israeli occupation’s transformation of Gaza into a war zone
Given the abhorrent and unjustifiable international complicity, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor emphasises that Israel has not spared even the dead in its genocidal war on Gazans.
Israel systematically violates the sanctity of the dead and of cemeteries, in flagrant violation of the principles of international humanitarian law and the rules of war in relation to the protection of cemeteries during armed conflicts, including the Hague Conventions and the 1949 Geneva Conventions and the First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions of 1977.
The Geneva-based human rights organisation stresses that Israel—like any other country— must abide by the principles of international law, which stipulate that the dead must be respected and protected during armed conflicts, and that the parties involved must take all reasonable steps to prevent the confiscation and dismemberment of dead bodies.
