In Gaza, gravediggers no longer wait for death before beginning their work. They prepare for the next burial every day, carving empty graves into battered earth as Israeli attacks, hunger, disease, and displacement continue claiming Palestinian lives.

Al Saha Cemetery sits east of Gaza City beside an outdoor market, spread across slopes visible from the nearby street. For more than twenty years, it has served as a final resting place for community members, including the grandparents of journalist Sojoud Alkhour.

Today, closed graves are surrounded by fresh excavations awaiting bodies that have not yet arrived. The sight captures a horrifying reality in Gaza, where burial has become an assembly line shaped by relentless mass death.

Two gravediggers working at Al Saha said they dig new graves daily because they expect more victims. Their grim preparation reflects how thoroughly war has transformed death from an exceptional tragedy into a constant feature of Palestinian life.

Waleed Ramadan, who is thirty three, buried his brother Muhammad at the cemetery last year. Even while grieving, he could not ignore the four open graves waiting beside his brother’s burial place.

“I thought that saying goodbye to my brother would be the hardest tragedy and loss I would ever experience,” Waleed says.

“But at the same time, while I was burying him, I noticed around four prepared open graves beside my brother’s grave, as if death were something inevitable, written for us every second. I felt that one of those graves might become mine within the next few hours.”

Another family arrived during Muhammad’s burial and asked whether one of the open excavations could be used for their relative. A gravedigger suggested that Muhammad could instead be buried with a family member already in the cemetery, an indication that even individual burial space was becoming scarce.

“My heart ached, and my eyes filled with tears,” Waleed says. “I do not think there is anyone [anywhere else] in the world who could see one grave being closed while another is being prepared before the death has even occurred.”

Before the war, a gravedigger named Ahmed would prepare one grave every few days. Now he moves continuously between burial sites, using crude tools handmade from wood that regularly break and require repairs, while exhaustion accumulates alongside the dead.

Ahmed works beneath a scorching sun as drones buzz overhead and bombardment remains an ever present threat. He continues because burial protects bodies from stray animals, preserves a measure of dignity, and allows families to mourn without spending additional dangerous hours exposed outside.

“What pushed me to prepare graves in advance is the dangerous situation in Gaza,” he says. “By doing so, I make sure that families can bury their loved ones and then return safely to their destroyed homes, tents, and families.”

The devastation does not end once a grave is closed. Israeli restrictions on cement, stone, construction supplies, and digging equipment have forced Palestinians to mark burial sites with cardboard, wooden boards, scrap tile, and pieces recovered from demolished homes.

Names are written in ink and attached to basic wooden or iron supports, while plastic sheets are placed across graves to keep out rain. Yet winter storms and intense sunlight quickly destroy those fragile markers, erasing names and making graves difficult for families to locate.

Aya, the twenty five year old sister of Alkhour’s friend Tasneem, searched for hours when she visited the Turkish Cemetery in Khan Yunis. Tasneem was killed near the beginning of the war, but the simple marker identifying her grave had deteriorated.

“They had written my sister Tasneem’s name on a square piece of tile in red and placed it on the ground, securing it with cement,” Aya says.

“Perhaps the ink faded because of the winter rain or the scorching sun, which gradually washed out its color. When I returned home, my mother told me that the ink had faded, so we decorated Tasneem’s grave with a few small plants so that we could recognize it.”

“I feel deep sadness for my sister and for her grave,” she adds.

“We used to live together in our beautiful room and have so much fun together. Now, my sister is beneath the earth.”

Families sometimes identify loved ones only by finding nearby graves built before the war, when durable stone and cement remained available. Gaza’s open graves now stand as a brutal warning, while its vanishing markers threaten to erase even the places where victims were finally laid to rest.