DAIL ALBARA, Gaza City (August 1999) — When the Israeli bomb began to fall, Mohammad al-Nazar, his wife and six children fled from their homes in southern Gaza in the middle of the night, scattering in fear along with hundreds of neighbors.
The dust had subsided and Al Najar was hanging out with his family in a shelter several miles away when his son, Ahmad, 23, went missing. As dawn began, the family searched for a nearby hospital and asked their neighbors if they had seen him.
There were no traces. Almost two years later, they are still investigating.
“It’s as if the earth had swallowed him,” Mohammad al-Najal said. He said from a family tent in Mwasi on the southern coast of Gaza: Their ninth move First camp since the fateful night of December 2023.
Thousands of people in Gaza are searching for relatives who have been missing in one of the most devastating wars of decades. Some are buried beneath the destroyed buildings. Some are like Al Najar’s son. It simply disappeared Israeli military operations.
In a war where the true number of deaths is unknown, “no one knows the exact number (of those who are missing),” said Katherine Bomberger, executive director of the International Committee on Missing Persons.
The Al-Najar family searched the rubble of their homes that had been bombed. They went to the morgue and confirmed with the International Committee of the Red Cross.
“Is he (Is this an Israeli prisoner or dead?” said his 46-year-old father. “We get lost. Everything is tormented.”
The Israeli Prison Office and the military have also declined to comment on Al-Najar’s situation, saying it cannot release any details that identifies the identity of a particular prisoner.
A tough job
The Ministry of Health says that around 6,000 people are still buried under the rubble today. In some cases, the actual number could probably exceed thousands. The whole family Zahel Al Wahidi, a data officer at the ministry, said people were killed in one bombing and no one reported missing.
Separately, the ministry has received reports from the families of around 3,600 other missing persons, and their safety is unknown, Alwahidi said. So far, they have only investigated more than 200 cases. Seven of them were found detained by Israel. Others were not among those known to have died or buried under the rubble.
The ministry is part of the Hamas-run government. The United Nations and many independent experts believe the numbers are reliable.
The ICRC has its own list of missing people, not including anyone believed to be under the rubble, and at least 7,000 cases are unresolved, said Chief Press Secretary Christian Cardon.
Amidst the chaos of attacks, strikes on buildings and mass evacuation of nearly all of Gaza’s 2.3 million people, there were many ways to go missing. Hundreds have been detained at Israeli checkpoints and rounded up in raids without any notice from their families.
The bodies are left on the streets during an Israeli attack on the ground. Palestinians were shot too close to Israeli military zones and found corrupt bodies weeks or months later.
The Israeli military has announced that it is searching for Israeli hostages and Palestinians who have been identified as armed groups, and the number of bodies is unknown. i’m back Hundreds of dead bodies The identity of Gaza, where they were buried, is unknown. Anonymous mass graveyard.
Bomberger said investigating missing persons will require advanced DNA techniques, samples from family members and unidentified bodies, as well as aerial images to locate burial sites and mass graves. “It’s a huge venture,” she said.
However, Israel has restricted the influx of DNA testing products into Gaza, according to Bomberger and the Gaza Ministry of Health. Israeli military authorities did not immediately comment when asked if it was banned.
Bomberger said it was the responsibility of the state to find the missing person, and in this case the occupying nation Israel. “So whether or not you want to do anything about it will depend on the political will of the Israeli authorities.”
My son’s smell
Fadwa al-Garban has not told anything about his 27-year-old son Mosaab since he went to buy food at his parents’ house in July, believing that Israeli forces have already withdrawn from an area near the southern town of Maan.
His cousins nearby saw Mosaab lying on the ground. They cried out his name, but he didn’t answer, and they left because the Israeli army was nearby, too dangerous to approach. They thought he was dead.
Later, the family returned and found no bodies and only slippers.
Her family posted notifications on social media in hopes that someone would witness Mosaav while in Israeli detention or buried after the body was found.
The Algarban lives with hope. Another relative was presumed to have died, but it was revealed that he had been in Israeli prison four days after the family officially expressed his condolences.
Whatever the fate of my son is, “a fire is burning in my heart,” Algarban said. “Even if someone buried him, it’s much easier than this fire.”
Human rights groups allege that Israel has “disappeared” hundreds of Palestinians from Gaza, detaining them without indictment or trial, often with communication cut off.
Israel has not made public its numbers, except as requested by the Freedom of Information Act. Due to the wartime amendments to Israeli law, detainees in the Gaza Strip were detained for 75 days without judicial review and were also denied a lawyer’s attendance for a long period. Appearances before a judge are usually held in secret through video.
Israeli human rights group Hamoked has obtained records showing that as of September 2,662 Palestinians had migrated from Gaza. He was detained in an Israeli prisonHundreds of others have been detained. Army Facilities Here is the rights group, united nations and detainees I’ve reported it Routine abuse and torture.
All Algarban left behind for his son was his last change of clothes. She refuses to wash them.
“I’ve been smelling it all the time. I want him,” she said, shaking. “I keep imagining him walking towards me in my tent. I say he’s not dead.”
It’s a ring
With most of Gaza bulldozers being destroyed, the family has to search for their own wreckage, hoping to find the bones of their lost loved ones.
Khalid Nassar’s daughter, Dahlia, 28, and her son, Mahmoud, 24, were killed in separate airstrikes, leaving them both buried beneath the houses of Jabariya refugee camp.
Jabarya has been affected by repeated attacks, attacks and ground attacks, and is currently under Israeli military control and is prohibited, with few rescuers allowed in.
Dahlia and her husband were murdered at their home on October 9, 2023, the third day of the war. Her children survived. They now live with their grandfather.
“We looked, but we couldn’t find her,” Nassar said. “It seemed she had evaporated with the rocket.”
A year later, Israel attacked the family and buried Mahmoud, who returned to shower after the family evacuated.
When the ceasefire began in January, Nassar and his wife, Cadra, headed out to search. The 60-year-old, a former construction worker and father of 10, used a hammer, shovel and small tools to scrape away the debris every day. My wife took away a bucket of sand and rubble.
They dug half the house, but found nothing. Israel then broke the ceasefire in March and was forced to evacuate.
Cadra refuses to despair. If a new ceasefire is reached, drilling will resume, she said. “Even if we only found a finger ring (Mahmoud’s) or a bone to hold in the grave as his son’s.”
___
El Deeb reported from Beirut. Associated Press Correspondent Mel Ridman in Tel Aviv, Israel, Julia Frankel in New York, Jamie Keaton in Geneva, and Toka Etzidine in Cairo contributed to the report.
