West Bank refugee camps struggle to find space to bury their dead

The streets are narrow, and houses tower towards the sky in Aida refugee camp. The Palestinian refugee camp was founded in 1950, and has continued to expand since then, with a current population of around 4,700 people. However, as the population burgeons, space does not. The Israeli separation wall tightly borders the perimeters of the camp, making the concept of outward expansion impossible. Instead people build up, stacking more rooms on top of houses while growing food and planting gardens on rooftops next to black water tanks that are too often empty. Life in Palestinian refugee camps has become a balance of temporary permanence.

Even in death, there is no relief from the constraints of occupation.

The graveyard in Aida refugee camp serves both its own population and the population of nearby Azza refugee camp. Aboveground tombs made up of large bricks sealed with cement, jut out from the ground and line the walkways of the cemetery. The graveyard is as old as the camp—the number of bodies, unknown. Each grave is recycled. Every seven years bones are moved aside to make room for the next.

Sharing graves among same-gendered family members is an Islamic tradition, although generally done by request, not necessity. In Aida’s graveyard, families have no choice but to be put to rest in the same tombs as their relatives who passed before them. Some graves house ten or more remains, which has become a notable aspect of the refugee camps, as such a number would not share a grave where room for more graves could exist.

“Sometimes there can be many people in one grave. It should be a choice, but there is no room and no land, so it isn’t a choice at all,” Mohammed Maraziq, Aida’s cemetery grounds keeper said.

In 2009, in an attempt to make space for new graves, the camp graveyard began to build upwards, just as it does with its homes. Bricks were laid, and new tombs were built on top of old ones in a double decker fashion in order to create more room for the dead. However, after the structures were built and a few people were laid to rest, local sheikhs got word of what the cemetery had done. They ordered the practice be stopped immediately. Unbeknown to the cemetery workers at the time, it is forbidden in Islam to entomb a body on top of another. Even in the shared graves, bones are moved over and out of the way, and new bodies are laid beside them rather than on top.

“We didn’t know it was forbidden, but now we do, so we stopped immediately. We just needed a solution,” Maraziq said. “Building up has always been our only choice.”

Families that have relatives buried in the top graves have been given permission to continue to use the tombs. However, like all graves they can only be used seven years after the last body was placed within them in order for a significant level of decomposition to take place. So many families may have potentially reusable graves in the refugee camps, but are unable to use them when a family member dies.

“Because you must wait before the grave can be opened again, and because there is no room to expand in the graveyards and in the camps in general because of occupation, some people are now being buried away from their family and away from the camp in other graveyards tens of kilometers away,” Sheikh Mahmoud Ignimad said.

For refugee families this can be a major issue. While it is traditionally up to preference whether family members are entombed together, it is customary for families to be buried among each other, in the same area. To add to this issue, it is also traditional for the dead to be carried by relatives to the burial site as part of the mourning process. The alternative graveyard is so far away that often it is impossible for this tradition to be upheld.

“No one wants to take this option. It is only in extreme circumstances, maybe when a family has no available tombs that this option is taken into consideration,” Sheikh Ignimad told Middle East Monitor, “It is not our way. But it is happening more often now”

Finding solutions for the lack of graveyard burial space is not only difficult due to the lack of land, but also the lack of funding and organisation. The camps have other more pressing municipal issues, like water, housing, education and high unemployment rates that take precedence over lack of burial space. Most of those issues are taken care of in partnership with the UNRWA, the relief agency established by the United Nations to oversee Palestinian refugee camps. While UNRWA is generally in charge of all issues concerning the camps, a UNRWA spokesperson told MEMO that this is one area in which they have no jurisdiction. The refugee camps across the West Bank all have their own way of managing their graveyards, internally.

However, for now, the graveyards in the refugee camps appear to be nearing capacity, and there doesn’t seem to be a plausible solution that doesn’t again disrupt the culture and way of life of the refugees. With no room to expand, the outlawing of building the graveyards upwards, and with used graves only able to be opened at least seven years after a burial, the reality for families is one of several members being buried apart and away from their homes. Just as occupation has divided families physically through occupation structures such as the separation wall and checkpoints, in death the occupation continues to have an impact.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.