As the general population of Gazans bears the brunt of the Israeli offensive against Hamas, the outpouring of angst from the survivors has manifested itself in the funerary wrappings of the deceased, and the the lack thereof.
Reuters reports that many of the deceased cannot be identified and simply state 'unknown male' or 'unknown female,' with the location of the strike that killed them documented to better help identify the deceased later on.
A bereaved son writes "my mother and everything" on the burial cloth covering his mother. Over the weeks since the initial Hamas assault on Southern Israel which killed 1,200 people, the IDF has responded with unabated, nearly universal lethality.
The white coverings, which are ritualistic requirements in Muslim burials, have been supplied by Arab governments are charities. However, the severity of localized death tolls often leads to shortages.
"The challenges we face are too much, there is a shortage in the knives and the scissors that we need to prepare the shrouds and cut them," said Mohammed Abu Mussa, a volunteer at Keratan Society, told Reuters.
"As you know, there is a blockade and there are no materials in the Gaza Strip, so we find difficulties getting knives, scissors, and cotton," he said, adding that so many people are dying that sometimes donated shrouds are not enough and he has to wrap four of five people in one shroud.
Marwan Al-Hams, director of Abu Yousef Al Najjar Hospital, said the dearth of shrouds signifies Gaza's suffering.
"The big number of the martyrs made the white shroud a symbol for this war and it became parallel to the Palestine flag in its influence and the knowledge of the world about the significance of our cause," he said.
The Prophet Muhammed encouraged his followers to wear white clothes and also wrap the dead in white. Thus, it is deemed a requirement to wrap the deceased in white before interment.
