Cemetery running out of space, officials warn

A Hevra Kadisha official said 70% of the available space in the cemetery - which opened only in 2001 - had already been used up by the middle of 2007.

By MIRIAM BULWAR DAVID-HAY
The Tel Regev Cemetery, which was supposed to meet Haifa residents' burial needs for the next 70 years, is rapidly running out of room and in just a few years will have no more space for new burials, reports Yediot Haifa. The Hevra Kadisha burial society in Haifa, which is responsible for the cemetery and which reportedly buries 13 to 15 people a day, is currently burying 750 people per dunam instead of the planned 250 in an effort to stave off the day when the cemetery will run out of room. According to the report, the shortage of space is likely to lead to up to 1,500 people being buried per dunam, a level of crowding that would necessitate multi-storey burials for many people. A top-level government committee, made up of representatives from the Prime Minister's and other offices, has already approved this type of burial for 150 of the cemetery's 600 dunams of land. Haifa residents reportedly overwhelmingly prefer to be buried singly and underground, with 99 percent of families requesting traditional burial plots. A Hevra Kadisha official said 70% of the available space in the cemetery - which opened only in 2001 - had already been used up by the middle of 2007. The cemetery, located about 30 km from Haifa, serves Haifa, the Krayot and surrounding areas, and was designed to provide a final resting place for 430,000 deceased. The report said the cemetery is one of the more expensive in Israel, with a plot costing a minimum of NIS 11,726, compared with NIS 8,708 in Tel Aviv. Israeli law guarantees free burial for every citizen, but if no plot has been purchased the burial society decides where the deceased will be buried.