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KHAN YOUNIS: Skeletons are neighbors for some Palestinians in Gaza who found nowhere but cemeteries to shelter from the war.

Gravestones have become seats and tables for families like that of Maisa Brikah, who has lived with her children in a dusty, sun-baked cemetery in the southern city of Khan Younis for five months. Some 30 families shelter here.

A blonde-haired toddler sits outside one tent, running fingers through the sand. Another peeks playfully from behind a drape of fabric.

Nighttime is another matter.

“When the sun goes down, the children get scared and don’t want to go, and I have a few children, four small ones,” Brikah said. 

“They are afraid to go out because of the dogs at night, and the dead.”

The vast majority of Gaza’s population of over 2 million people has been displaced by the two years of war between Hamas and Israel. 

With the ceasefire that began on Oct. 10, some have returned to what remains of homes.

Others are still crowded into the strip of remaining territory that Israeli forces don’t control.

Here and in other cemeteries in Gaza, there is life among the dead. A prayer rug hangs on a line. A child pushes a water jug on a wheelchair between the graves. Smoke rises from a cooking fire.

One of Brikah’s nearest neighbors was Ahmad Abu Said, who died in 1991 at age 18, according to the carving on his tombstone. There is unease, a feeling of disrespect, at setting up camp here.

But there is little choice. Brikah said her family’s home elsewhere in Khan Younis was destroyed. There is no return for now. Israeli forces occupy their neighborhood.

Other residents of this cemetery come from Gaza’s north. They are often far from the land where their own loved ones are buried.

Mohammed Shmah said he has been living here for three months. He said his house had been destroyed, too.

“I’m a grown man, but I still get scared of the graves at night. I hide in my tent,” he said, perched on a broken tombstone and squinting in the sun. 

He said he had only 200 shekels (around $60) on him when a friend took it to help bring his family to the cemetery.

The lack of money for shelter elsewhere is one reason keeping families living among the graves, said Hanan Shmah, Mohammed’s wife. 

With care, she washed dishes in a soapy container the size of a pie tin, guarding precious water.

“Of course, life in the cemetery is full of fear, dread, and worries, and you don’t sleep in addition to the stress we experience,” she said.

There is no guarantee of safety, even among the dead. Israeli forces have bombed cemeteries during the war, according to the UN and other observers. 

Israel has accused Hamas of using some cemeteries for cover, and has argued that the sites lose their protection when they are used for military purposes.

During the war, bodies in Gaza were buried wherever they could, including in hospital courtyards. According to custom, Palestinian families are buried near loved ones. The fighting has largely disrupted that.

Now, with the ceasefire, the search is on for the dead.

Israel presses Hamas to turn over the remains of hostages. 

Palestinian health officials post gruesome photos of bodies returned by Israel in the hope that families can identify them. 

Others search Gaza’s vast stretches of rubble for bodies that the fighting long made unable to claim.

The death toll in Gaza from the war — now over 68,800 — has jumped by hundreds since the ceasefire began from the recovery of such remains alone.

Families in this Khan Younis cemetery have watched as new additions arrive, often buried not under slabs but under sand, marked off by stones.

Recovery, reconstruction, return. All feel far away.

“After the ceasefire my life is the same inside the cemetery, meaning I gained nothing,” Mohammed Shmah said.

LONDON: In Tulkarem, a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, residential buildings have been reduced to piles of grey rubble, the facades of shuttered businesses blackened by soot. Damaged vehicles jut from the wreckage, and the surrounding streets are eerily quiet.

As of late September, about 32,000 Palestinians had been forced to flee the camps of Tulkarem, Nur Shams, and Jenin after months of Israeli military raids, orchestrated under Operation Iron Wall, according to the UN Relief and Works Agency.

Israel launched the campaign in Jenin in January, later expanding it in February to include the Tulkarem and Nur Shams camps. The military said it was targeting Iran-backed armed groups that had grown stronger in the camps and were launching attacks against Israelis.

What began as a series of targeted raids to neutralize Palestinian armed groups and protect Israeli settlements, has since become a sustained military campaign that has displaced thousands and reshaped life in the northern West Bank.

Samir, a displaced resident of Tulkarem camp whose name has been changed for his safety, says Israeli forces have demolished 24 properties belonging to his extended family over the past nine months. Each four-story building, he said, housed an average of five people.

“Our family has been wiped off the camp’s register,” he told Arab News. “They demolished everything we owned — we have nothing left in the camp.

“This is breaking up families and tearing at our social fabric. What did we do to deserve this? We’re simple people, and now everyone lives in a different place. Our family is separated.”

Ahmad, another displaced resident, said he and his wife knew they would never return when soldiers forced them from their home.

“When we were forced out, my wife said goodbye to our home by spraying Zamzam water and perfume — as if she were preparing a body for burial,” Ahmad told Arab News, referring to the Muslim ritual of washing and perfuming the dead. “She was in tears as she bid it farewell.”

At the time, his wife was pregnant with their third child. When the couple returned after she had given birth, hoping to recover a few possessions, he said they found only rubble and splintered wood.

“We wanted to go back to collect our belongings, but when we reached our home, we found that the Israelis had destroyed absolutely everything,” Ahmad said. “Our hearts were broken.”

He said the camp’s condition “is beyond description” and that the operation has rendered it “inhabitable.”

“We deserve to live with dignity, like everyone else in the world. Why must we endure so much injustice?”

Israel says it launched Operation Iron Wall in response to security threats.

According to data from the Israel Security Agency, between the start of the Gaza war and the end of April, there were 8,670 “terrorist attacks” in the West Bank, which killed 64 Israelis and injured 484, the Washington Institute reported.

Since January, the operation has sought to restrict the freedom of action of militants, especially in refugee camps that, according to Israel, had become launchpads for attacks and havens for armed groups organized in battalions.

The operation has led to a significant improvement in security for Israel, with only 25 major attacks originating in the area between January and May, compared with 135 in the same period last year.

But it has come at a significant human cost. Since the start of the operation, at least 550 housing units in Tulkarem have been destroyed and more than 2,500 have been damaged, according to Wael Abu Tahoun, an engineer on the camp’s Popular Committee for Services.

A July study by the committee found that 230 vehicles had been destroyed and 280 commercial premises damaged, looted, or burned.

“Institutions within the camp, such as centers for the disabled, the social club, kindergartens, and even the four existing mosques, were all damaged,” he said. “These figures reflect the scale of the disaster.”

Infrastructure in six main streets — Al-Awdeh, Al-Balawneh, Al-Khadamat, Qaqun, Okasha, and the street next to Al-Awdeh Hall — was also destroyed.

“There are no sewage networks, no water networks, no telecommunications networks, and no electricity,” Abu Tahoun said. “Even the lighting poles and transformers were damaged. Therefore, a complete reconstruction is needed, with new studies and planning.”

The camp’s narrow alleys and tightly packed homes made it especially vulnerable. “Military vehicles passing through newly opened streets caused some houses to collapse and others to crack,” Abu Tahoun said.

The camp, in the city of Tulkarem in the West Bank’s northwest, was established in 1950 to house Palestinians displaced during the Nakba — the mass expulsion that accompanied Israel’s creation in 1948.

Covering just 0.18 square kilometers, it is among the most densely populated refugee camps in the West Bank, according to UNRWA.

In early May, the Israeli military said it was “making changes in the camps — including opening routes and roads — to allow freedom of movement and operational capability (for Israel’s military forces).”

In a separate statement to The Times of Israel, the military described the camps as “terrorist strongholds, with gunmen operating from within civilian neighborhoods.”

It also said demolitions were part of efforts to “prevent the return and entrenchment of gunmen” and to “reshape and stabilize the region.”

Violence has escalated in the West Bank since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, which triggered Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.

On Oct. 3, 2024, an Israeli strike on a residential building in Tulkarem camp killed at least 18 people, including Hamas commander Zahi Yaser Abd Al-Razeq Oufi, the Palestinian Authority-run Wafa news agency reported.

The UN Human Rights Office said most of those killed were civilians, including three children and two women — many in their homes or on the surrounding streets.

A mid-August report by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, said Israeli operations in the West Bank’s northern camps “have significantly altered the geographical landscape through the destruction of buildings and infrastructure.”

It described the demolition of properties as “collective punishment” and raised “strong concern” about Israel’s “excessive use of force” in the West Bank. It stressed that Israeli actions since October 2023 show intent to forcibly transfer Palestinians, expand settlements, and entrench permanent occupation.

The commission noted parallels between operations in the West Bank and Gaza — including the use of tanks, airstrikes, and the destruction of civilian properties — which “give rise to concerns that Israel is targeting the Palestinian people as a whole.”

Since Oct. 7, 2023, Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed at least 68,530 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, while more than 7,350 have been killed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported.

In Gaza, more than 90 percent of housing units have been destroyed and 1.9 million Palestinians displaced.

Abu Tahoun said the Tulkarem camp had been deteriorating long before the raids began in late 2023.

“The water network, built in 1960, had not been upgraded since,” he said. “Sewage and rainwater systems were inadequate, and electricity lines were worn out.

“Most of the repairs carried out in the camp (before the operation) were temporary. Works were executed partially and quickly because the occupation forces would return after short periods and destroy what had been repaired.”

Repeated Israeli operations since 2023 “destroyed nearly everything that remained,” he added. “The most recent incursion was the most severe, leaving almost no infrastructure intact.”

Families displaced from Tulkarem camp are dispersed among schools, mosques, and temporary shelters.

Abdul Rahim Al-Muwahhid School, a newly built facility, is among the schools repurposed to shelter evacuees instead of welcoming pupils for the new academic year.

“There’s nowhere for us to go. We were born in the camp. All our lives and memories are there,” one displaced woman told Arab News. “We have been evicted from the camp, but our hearts are still there.

“People in the camp are poor and lead simple lives, but they’re like one big family — they love and respect one another. But this camp has also produced many highly educated people — doctors, engineers, and professionals in every field.”

Kun Sanadan Li Shaabik (Support Your People), a local volunteer initiative, said the displacement has devastated community structures and left children particularly vulnerable. Many have dropped out of school, it said, while others show signs of trauma and anxiety.

UNRWA has described the situation as a “cyclical displacement crisis” driven by military incursions, settler violence, and the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements.

More than 4,000 children have been forced from classrooms and now rely on remote or temporary education, UNRWA said on Oct. 22.

Meanwhile, widespread poverty, rising prices, and disrupted supply chains have left many families food insecure, some reducing meals or borrowing money to survive.

The agency said that Israel’s actions are “laying the groundwork for formal annexation of Palestinian land.”

Despite the devastation, Abu Tahoun is cautiously hopeful. “As soon as Israeli forces withdraw, reconstruction could begin in the least damaged areas,” he said. “But major projects require tenders and external funding. The municipality alone can’t bear the cost.”

The study by the popular committee estimated the total damage at more than 70 million shekels (about $21.5 million), excluding water and electricity networks.

That study was completed in early July, however. “Since then, demolition operations have continued for approximately 104 additional homes,” Abu Tahoun said, suggesting the true cost could be far higher.

“Future demolitions cannot be ruled out, as the occupation’s actions are unpredictable.”