Burying the dead comes down to numbers

BY MATTHEW MCALLESTER | Newsday Staff Correspondent

July 5, 2006

RAFAH REFUGEE CAMP, Gaza - Osama Tawil, funeral director to militants, learned his lesson during a battle in 2004: Make sure there are enough refrigerators to hold all the bodies until the fighting has died down.

"If there is this big attack against Rafah it will be very hard to bury them quickly enough," said Tawil, who is part of the Fatah faction but said he coordinates with other factions in Rafah, the southernmost part of the Gaza Strip, when it comes to burying "martyrs. "

This time Tawil, 40, has already called a business owner to get permission to replace vegetables in the man's huge walk-in refrigerator with bodies should Israel launch a major offensive on Gaza. Any attack would likely include an assault on Rafah.

Tawil is an experienced stage manager when it comes to the theater of a Palestinian militant's funeral. He has choreographed more than he can recall. It's a job that falls to members of factions all over Gaza and the West Bank. They volunteer. The moment they hear a militant or civilian has been killed by Israelis, they jump into action and set in motion the repetitive narrative of mourning.

He expects to be extremely busy if the crisis sparked by the kidnapping of Israeli Cpl. Gilad Shalit is not resolved peacefully.

"Once there is a martyr, we identify which party he belongs to," Tawil explained, sitting on a chair in the quiet hallway of a building in central Rafah. He has up to 15 helpers for each funeral, each with their specified duties. "If he is Fatah we go to the family and start preparing the mourning tent, the chairs, the coffee, the dates, sweets, the posters. "

The coffee is usually bitter at funerals, to remind mourners of their loss. It is served in tiny cups to the men - only men, according to Muslim tradition - who sit in long rows of white plastic chairs in the mourning tent outside the martyr's family home. "Then we get loudspeakers on the streets, calling people," Tawil said.

The body is taken briefly to a local mosque and prayed for, before being quickly taken on to the Martyrs' Cemetery in Rafah. Usually the crowds are very large for fallen militants or civilians killed by Israelis.

There is no washing of the body, for a martyr in Muslim tradition is clean already.

"Then we go to the mourning tent and spend three days there," Tawil said. "We welcome all delegates and representatives from all the parties. After the three days the movement sort of adopts the family to provide services. The name goes on the list of martyrs so there will be a monthly salary for the family. "

In May 2004 there was a major battle in Rafah, Tawil said. There were more bodies than could fit into the local hospital's morgue, so Tawil quickly rented a walk-in refrigerator to allow the bodies to be stored there.

This time he has planned ahead, preparing enough space in a walk-in for about 50 bodies.

But there's another potential problem. The Martyrs' Cemetery is full, he said, and the new one is so close to an Israeli military post that mourners fear being shot at. "In case we cannot reach the new one we will have to dig one big grave," he said. "And we'll have to move others across. There's no space."