Gaza City – Fatima Abdullah cannot erase the painful images from al-Batsh cemetery, which was excavated and desecrated this week by the Israeli military in the Tuffah neighbourhood east of Gaza City, as the army recovered the last captive’s body.The cemetery contains the grave of her husband, who was killed during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, alongside thousands of other graves belonging to families across the devastated territory.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of listFatima, a mother of three, has told Al Jazeera of the unbearable tension she felt knowing that the Israeli military’s search operations were focused on that cemetery.“We were all on edge… we knew the operation was at al-Batsh cemetery, and everyone was scared it would be their loved one’s grave next. I imagined the machinery approaching my husband’s grave, and I said, ‘No, God.’”Fatima’s husband, Mohammad al-Shaarawi, was killed in an Israeli drone strike on December 11, 2024. The attack targeted him with a group of friends in Tuffah. At the time, Fatima and her children were displaced in southern Gaza.“Even the dead were not spared,” Fatima says, describing a violation of the last remnants of their right to mourn and preserve dignity.“Corpses scattered, bones, bags thrown … they were bulldozing graves, dumping the remains as if they were nothing.”During …
