God, it’s even worse than we thought...
“Martin Chulov, Middle East correspondent | December 14, 2007
THE last two years have been tough to live in Gaza - and now it’s become difficult to die.
The ever-tightening siege of the Gaza Strip has seen stocks run dry of raw materials for most of death’s necessities. There is no cement for graves, no iron, or mortar to seal them and precious little white cloth in which bodies must be wrapped for a proper Islamic burial.
Since September, Salahedin al-Ayub, the foreman at the Beit Lahiya cemetery in the north of Gaza, has been forced to buy used curbside bricks from the local council to seal his makeshift graves.
He long ago used his last dollop of cement and fears the house bricks he’s now using to fortify the graves will one day collapse on their occupants.
And Mr Ayub has more to worry about; how to hang on to casual gravediggers, all of whom have this week quit after day one of a three-day contract that requires them to lug dozens of 80kg curbside bricks across the sandy cemetery.
“It’s much harder for them this way, but everyday I have to find different workers,” he complained. “The next day they don’t come back. It takes three workers to make a grave and I give them 150 Shekels ($50) each, but they won’t even hang around for that.”
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22920091-2703,00.html
Doesn't sound like there's a critical unemployment problem in Gaza, does it?
As for laws in the US that impose all sorts of requirements on graves, the folks in Gaza are in no position to insist on maintaining that kind of standard of living. My ancestors (and everybody elses's) in the westward migration in the US had to stick their dead in the ground along the way, without coffins, burial cloths, or gravemarkers beyond a random rock picked up off the ground nearby or a couple of sticks tied together in the form of a cross. Gaza residents need to learn to make do with what they have, and focus on what's really important. At this point in their history, they've got about a million more important things to work on than fancy burial vaults.