The Last Refuge of Gaza’s Displaced Turn into Temporary Graves

Palestinians in the courtyard of the school housing displaced people after it was targeted by Israeli bombing in Gaza City on Saturday (AFP)
Palestinians in the courtyard of the school housing displaced people after it was targeted by Israeli bombing in Gaza City on Saturday (AFP)
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The Last Refuge of Gaza’s Displaced Turn into Temporary Graves

Palestinians in the courtyard of the school housing displaced people after it was targeted by Israeli bombing in Gaza City on Saturday (AFP)
Palestinians in the courtyard of the school housing displaced people after it was targeted by Israeli bombing in Gaza City on Saturday (AFP)

Israeli forces have turned schools - which the displaced used as their last refuge - into mass graves, after systematically targeting many of them in the past few weeks, causing widespread destruction and numerous casualties.

The Israeli occupation forces are committing massacres inside schools, employing a new strategy that goes beyond targeting individual classrooms or side rooms. They are deliberately destroying large sections of these schools to keep them out of service and prevent the displaced from returning after significant damage.

On Saturday, Israel bombed Al-Tabaeen private school, which shelters about 1,800 displaced people, mostly from the destroyed Shujaiya neighborhood. Those had been forced to flee to the school a few days earlier after the occupation planes had destroyed two other schools.

Nermin Abed, who lost her husband Abdullah Al-Arair, among about 100 Palestinians who died in the attack, said that she could not believe that she saw her husband for the last time just moments before he left the classroom, where they were staying, to perform the dawn prayer inside a small prayer hall on the ground floor of the school.

Abed mourned her husband with tears, and collapsed several times when she was unable to accompany him to be buried, along with several others, in a temporary graveyard near the Shujaiya neighborhood.

Ahmed Abed, Nermin’s brother, told Asharq Al-Awsat that they arrived at Al-Tabaeen School after miraculously escaping Dalal Al-Maghribi School, which was bombed earlier this month.

“There is nowhere else to go. Every place in Gaza is a target,” he said.

In the Gaza Strip, government schools, those affiliated with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), and private schools, have all been converted into shelters. Since the beginning of the war, 175 of these centers have been bombed, including 154 schools, resulting in the death of over 1,150 Palestinians, according to statistics from the Gaza government media office.

UNRWA confirmed that 190 of its buildings in the Gaza Strip were completely or partially destroyed, while two-thirds of its schools, which included displaced persons, saw the same fate.

Mohammad al-Jaabari, one of the survivors of the massacre who has lost at least 11 of his cousins, finds no place to shelter except these schools. He told Asharq al-Awsat: “This massacre was not and will not be the last, but give me a safe place to go to. They are targeting all schools in the north.”

The occupation has targeted seven schools housing displaced people since the beginning of this August, all in different areas of Gaza City, leaving at least 177 victims and dozens of injured.

Israel claims that it is targeting shelter centers, especially schools, under the pretext that they are used by the Hamas and Islamic Jihad movements to carry out attacks. However, numerous accounts backed by photos and videos reveal that many casualties are among women and children.

Hamas has denied the presence of gunmen in Al-Tabaeen School, and stated that there were strict instructions to ensure no fighters were among civilians.



Seating Plan for a Pope’s Funeral – It’s Complicated, or Compliqué

Police officers patrol as visitors queue to enter St. Peter's Basilica of the Vatican, viewed in the background, a day prior to the Pope's funeral, in Rome on April 25, 2025. (AFP)
Police officers patrol as visitors queue to enter St. Peter's Basilica of the Vatican, viewed in the background, a day prior to the Pope's funeral, in Rome on April 25, 2025. (AFP)
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Seating Plan for a Pope’s Funeral – It’s Complicated, or Compliqué

Police officers patrol as visitors queue to enter St. Peter's Basilica of the Vatican, viewed in the background, a day prior to the Pope's funeral, in Rome on April 25, 2025. (AFP)
Police officers patrol as visitors queue to enter St. Peter's Basilica of the Vatican, viewed in the background, a day prior to the Pope's funeral, in Rome on April 25, 2025. (AFP)

They may be the most powerful people on earth, but for the seating arrangement at Pope Francis' funeral on Saturday, all foreign leaders will play second fiddle to the Argentines and Italians and surrender to the whims of the French alphabet.

About 130 foreign delegations had so far expressed their desire to attend the funeral, the Vatican said on Friday, and more were expected to do so throughout the day. Those include around 50 heads of state who have been confirmed as attending, among them US President Donald Trump and 10 reigning monarchs.

Apart from the VIPs, hundreds of thousands of people are expected to attend the funeral in St. Peter's Square, which starts at 10 a.m. (0800 GMT) on Saturday. Italian police have laid on one of the most complex security operations in decades.

The official delegations will sit at a section to the right of the altar at the top of the steps leading toward St. Peter's Basilica.

Pride of place goes to Argentina, Francis' native country, whose president, Javier Milei, will sit in the front row. Milei, a maverick right-wing libertarian, had heaped insults on Francis while he was campaigning in 2023, calling him an "imbecile who defends social justice". But the president shifted his tone after he took office that year.

Next comes Italy, the country that surrounds the Vatican and which agreed in 1929 to recognize its sovereignty as the world's smallest state. It gets the second-best seats in the VIP section also because the pope is bishop of Rome and primate of the Catholic bishops of Italy.

That is when the alphabet in French – still considered the language of diplomacy – kicks in for the other delegations. The countries following Italy are ordered according to their names in French and not in their native languages.

So, it is Etats Unis and not United States, Allemagne instead of Deutschland (Germany), and Pays-Bas instead of Nederland (The Netherlands).

Royalty will take precedence. Reigning monarchs -- expected to include royalty such as the kings and queens of Spain and Belgium and Prince Albert of Monaco -- will be seated in front of other heads of state.

Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said on Friday that no distinction would be made between Catholic and non-Catholic royalty for the seating order. After the royals come the remaining heads of state. Trump, who attracted criticism from Francis because of his immigration policies, will sit ahead of many other leaders because Etats Unis begins with an "E".

That alphabetic logic means that Trump - currently engaged in trying to get a peace deal in the war in Ukraine - will not be sitting near Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

Former US President Joe Biden, who has been the target of constant criticism by Trump, is attending the funeral, but will not be part of the official US delegation, a diplomatic source said. This means Biden, a lifelong Catholic, should be sitting further back, with other VIPs.