For more than a month, Abu Saher al-Maghari has stood over this platform, gently tending to the bodies that have been arriving at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central Gaza Strip.

The 53-year-old, who has a quiet air, has been shrouding the dead for 15 years at this hospital. But since the Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip began on October 7, al-Maghari has witnessed a huge influx of bodies, many of them mutilated.

When asked about the bodies he had seen, al-Maghari began crying.

“I have never experienced such a difficult time in my life,” al-Maghari said, wiping tears from his white beard.

“Throughout my years of work, I used to shroud from 30 to a maximum of 50 natural deaths daily, and in the case of previous Israeli military escalations, the number might reach about 60,” he recalled.

Now, he shrouds about 100 bodies, and sometimes that number can rise up to 200, depending on the intensity of the bombing and the areas targeted by Israeli warplanes.

“Most of the bodies arrive at the hospital in very bad condition,” al-Maghari said. “Torn limbs, severe bruises and deep wounds all over the body. I have never gone through anything like this before.”

‘My heart breaks over children’s torn limbs’

The largest number of victims he receives are of children and women, and the nature of their injuries and wounds is unfamiliar to him.

“What saddens me most is shrouding children,” al-Maghari said. “My heart breaks as I collect the children’s torn limbs and put them in one shroud. What have they done?”

For the past 34 days, more than 10,800 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip.

This number includes more than 4,400 children and 2,900 women, resulting in the United Nations secretary-general describing Gaza as a “graveyard” for children.

According to Mohammed al-Hajj, the hospital’s spokesman, the bodies of at least 2,476 Palestinians have arrived at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital since the beginning of the war on Gaza.

Since the war began more than a month ago, Abu Saher al-Maghari has had to shroud up to 200 bodies every day [Attiya Darwish/Al Jazeera]

The hospital had a 200-bed capacity for patients before the war but was forced to add more due to the more than 5,300 wounded who have arrived at the hospital over the past month, al-Hajj said.

“We expanded the bed capacity to 431 beds, and this put us in front of a dilemma and challenge in terms of serving this expansion,” he said.

Al-Maghari, who sometimes works with an assistant, has shrouded the bodies that have arrived at the hospital.

“I start my day shrouding the dead and killed from six in the morning until eight in the evening without stopping,” he told Al Jazeera after stealing a moment for the afternoon prayer.

Some of the bodies that arrive are already in an advanced state of decomposition with bones visible and an unbearable smell after lying for days under the rubble of bombed buildings.

Other bodies arrive in torn pieces, some burned beyond recognition, al-Mahgari said. This is something new, he said. The injuries are so unfamiliar to him that he wonders if the nature of the missiles and explosives used in the Israeli attacks are different from what has come before.

Moments of farewell – heartbreaking and cruel

Despite the daily horrors, al-Maghari goes about his job as always. He said it is his firm belief that family members must have the right to say goodbye to their loved ones.

“My mission presents me with a great challenge,” he said. “The parents outside are going crazy in their grief, screaming and crying for their child. So I try to be as compassionate as I can be and work on making the bodies look presentable so that they can say goodbye.”

Al-Maghari focuses on the general appearance of the dead, wiping away the blood and dust, and then writing their names on their shrouds.

Surviving family members are especially shocked to see the torn body parts of their loved ones, which he places carefully in one shroud.

“These moments of the final farewell are always heartbreaking and cruel,” he said. “Sometimes I receive bodies that have no features, due to explosive shrapnel. Here, I tie the shroud shut to spare the family members from remembering their loved ones in such a graphic state.”

Often, he has to shroud bodies inside ambulances that arrive at the hospital because it is simply too difficult to carry the dismembered body parts to his workspace for washing and shrouding.

Al-Maghari said the number of bodies arriving at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital doubled after the mass displacement of Gaza City residents to the cities in the southern Gaza Strip, which increased after October 13.

“Every day, women, men and children, all of them civilians, are killed in Israeli attacks on their homes or public places or while traveling to the south,” he said.

Abu Saher al-Maghari, who has shrouded the bodies of the dead at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital for 15 years, says he has never seen injuries like the ones he is seeing now [Attiya Darwish/Al Jazeera]

‘No time to cry’

Al-Maghari believes that discussing the toll this work is taking on his mental health is a “luxury” in light of the catastrophic conditions the health sector is enduring.

“Dealing with this number of torn and burned bodies, most of them children requires a high level of psychological toughness that not every human being possesses,” he said. “I face a real test every day. There is no time to cry or break down at the same time, but we are only human.”

Al-Maghari’s work in these dangerous conditions does not leave him the opportunity to think about his family, who lives in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the center of Gaza City.

“Like all parents, I fear for my family, but I can barely communicate with them or be reassured,” the father of five children said.

“When I return home, I am unable to talk to my family at all,” he added. “All I ask of them is to leave me alone, even if they miss me. It’s beyond my control.”

As the Israeli bombardment and ground offensive continues, he knows it is possible that Israeli strikes could hit closer to home.

“I often imagine that my children could be among the victims that I will shroud at any moment,” al-Maghari said. “Everyone is being targeted, without exception.”

The post Abu Saher al-Maghari: The man who shrouds the dead in Gaza appeared first on News Agency nabakhabar.

On Friday, Israel launched missiles throughout the besieged Palestinian enclave, killing 10 people, including a five-year-old girl, a 23-year-old woman, as well as Taysir al-Jabari, a commander of Islamic Jihad’s military wing.

Islamic Jihad group said it fired more than 100 rockets into Israel in retaliation for the air raids. The violence raised fears of another war on Gaza by Israel, just 15 months after a month-long conflict that killed more than 260 people.

“Everyone is nervous, there is no appetite for war,” said Tamer Qarmout from the Doha Institute of Graduate Studies, who hails from Gaza and has family there.

“Gaza has witnessed four or five major conflicts over the last 15 years. We’re still talking about the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip. Gaza has never really recovered, it just lives from conflict to conflict,” he told Al Jazeera.

Israel’s deadly attacks came after Israeli forces arrested Bassam al-Saadi, a senior member of the armed group, earlier in the week. Al-Saadi was detained during an Israeli raid in the West Bank city of Jenin, during which a teenager was killed.

‘Shock and awe’

Prior to the assassination of al-Jabari, Israel tightened its grip on the coastal enclave, already 15 years under a brutal blockade, by shutting down all border crossings.

Israel also closed roads around Gaza earlier this week and sent reinforcements to the border as it braced for a response after al-Saadi’s arrest.

Friday’s attack came on the heels of previous assaults, including drone strikes on the Gaza Strip, leading some observers to suggest the current escalation is a calculated move. The West Bank, too, has also seen a rise in Israeli attacks by soldiers and settlers alike, as well as arrests of Palestinians and home demolitions.

“Israel is arming its settlers in the West Bank to shoot and kill Palestinians and not to [do so] under the chain of command of the military. So what we’re seeing right now is an intensification of Israel’s military strategy of ‘shock and awe’,” said Mariam Barghouti, a Ramallah-based researcher.

Palestinian women appear shocked following Israeli air raids on Khan Yunis in the 
southern Gaza Strip on Friday [Said Khatib/AFP]

‘It’s a contest’

Israel appeared intent on escalating the situation when Prime Minister Yair Lapid said on Thursday that Israel “will not shy away from using force to restore normal life in the south of the country, and we will not stop the policy of arresting terrorist operatives in Israel”.

Nour Odeh, a former Palestinian Authority government spokesman and a political analyst, suggested the latest attack could be politically motivated.

“Gaza is traumatized. It has not recovered yet. Hamas and Jihad were going out of their way to maintain calm and give people a chance to breathe. No one was seeking an escalation – except Lapid,” said Odeh.

“It’s a contest to show who’s more powerful. Lapid wants to prove he has what it takes, even though he has no military background,” she added.

Palestinian medics carry the body of a man killed in an Israeli air raid on Gaza 
City on Friday [Mahmud Hams/AFP]

‘Gazans will pay’

Analysts said there are intersecting electoral influences fueling Israel’s decision to start what could possibly be another war.

As is the case almost every summer, the current governing coalition in Israel is meaning to look hawkish in the lead-up to another election cycle in which the Likud Party – headed by former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – is poised for a return.

It also came at a time when the United States is gearing up for midterm elections, and with the Democrats elevated by some minor legislative victories, the Biden administration will be more averse to telling Israel to cease its attacks, or holding it accountable for war crimes such as the killing of the young girl and other civilians on Friday.

“Israel is using Gazans as sacrificial pawns in their ongoing struggle for power and are acting with impunity because they know nobody can or will hold them accountable,” said Tariq Kenney-Shawa, a US-based policy fellow at Al Shabaka – The Palestinian Policy Network, an independent, nonprofit think-tank.

“The fact that zero rockets were fired from Gaza prior to Israel’s unilateral decision to start a massacre, despite the tightening of the blockade, and the assassination of PIJ [Palestinian Islamic Jihad] leaders, it is evidence of the vacuity of Israeli security concerns.

“Israel appears bent on striking PIJ hard, so PIJ will have to respond as they have already indicated. This is going to escalate again and Gazans will pay.”

Gideon Levy, an Israeli commentator and writer for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, told Al Jazeera that bombing Gaza has become a way for Israeli politicians to show their “strength” ahead of voting.

“I’m very suspicious that it has to do with the elections. Any prime minister needs to prove himself, especially if he comes from the center-left in Israel. And we have a new prime minister, and he wants to show that he’s macho like all the former prime ministers. All those are very poor excuses to go for another round in Gaza,” Levy said.

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