Daily Star staff
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
SIDON: South Lebanon’s Palestinians have run out of space to bury their dead. The residents of the notorious camp of Ain al-Hilweh cannot even find a grave to bury their loved ones after the new cemetery in the camp ran out of space.
Bodies are now piled upon one another in graves that are dug up and later categorized as two or three-floor graves, depending on the number of bodies they enclose.
The camp’s new cemetery has become crammed with thousands of graves, which are even erected on the cemetery’s pathways, and for over a month now, residents of Ain al-Hilweh cannot find new graves to honor their dead in a way that is acceptable by Islamic law.
Residents view their situation as yet another tragedy they have to endure and have found a temporary solution for their dilemma by digging up graves in the old and new cemeteries and burying the recently deceased over the remains of the old.
“We can’t find peace in life, or in death,” one resident said.
The two cemeteries have been built on land that had been previously purchased by the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).
Fouad Othman, a member of the camp’s Popular Committee, described the predicament as a social and humanitarian plight. “We have had a burial crisis for over a month and a half now, and we have had to bury our dead in inappropriate ways by digging up graves containing non-decomposed corpses and burying new bodies on top of them.
“This new way of burial is unethical and against Islamic law because it disrespects the sanctity of the dead,” said Othman, calling on the PLO to buy a currently available land between the two cemeteries.
“Otherwise,” he added, “the camp’s residents will start having to bury their dead in the streets, or they will have to cremate the bodies, and that is ethically and religiously unacceptable.”
Ain al-Hilweh’s cemeteries resemble a small nation for Palestinians, its marble tombstones carrying the names of various Palestinian towns and villages.
On a visit to his father’s grave, Hisham Zeaiter, a young Palestinian man, said: “We want a grave, not a palace,” and added that “the curse of suffering haunts us in life and death.”
The cemetery’s workman, Imad Atout, indicated that the old cemetery contained around 3,000 graves which enclosed around 5,000 bodies, as the graves included three or more bodies.
“Four members of my family were buried in one grave,” Atout said. His colleague Mohammad Mustafa indicated that the monthly average of Palestinians buried in the camp’s cemetery ranged from 17 to 20 deaths.
What makes matters worse is the fact that both of Ain al-Hilweh’s cemeteries also receive the dead of Miyeh Miyeh camp and the dead of some Palestinian communities in Sidon. Palestinians are not allowed to bury their dead in Sidon’s new cemetery unless they already have relatives buried in the city’s old cemetery.
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