Gaza City, Gaza Strip – With exhausted steps and eyes filled with tears, Hanaa al-Mabhuh moves between the hall displaying photographs of bodies and the morgue at al-Shifa Hospital in a grim search for any trace of her missing son.
The 56-year-old mother wipes away tears with the back of her hand and stares at the decomposed faces on the screen, torn between the desire to find out what happened to her youngest child, while at the same time fearing he might be among the dead handed over by Israel under a US-brokered ceasefire deal.
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Thousands of Palestinians from Gaza have been seeking information on loved ones who went missing since the war began after the deadly October 7, 2023 raid by Hamas.
Driven by her need for closure, Hanaa returns to scan the images on the screens one more time.
“This boy is a piece of me,” Hanaa tells Al Jazeera, referring to 18-year-old Omar, who disappeared along with one of his cousins, Alaa, when they went to inspect the ruins of their home in Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza last June. Omar, a high school student, was the youngest among his seven siblings.
“Every child is precious to his family, but my son is a part of me,” she adds, tears streaming down her cheeks as she walks toward the morgue.
The family contacted the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and several human rights organisations to try to find out what happened to Omar and his cousin, but to no avail.
Hanaa says the wait has been heartbreaking.
“We do not know whether they are prisoners, or whether they [the Israelis] killed them and took their bodies or detained their bodies along with those bodies they release in batches.”
“We are running as if in a mirage and we do not know anything,” says Hanaa, falling silent as if trying to catch her breath.
Endless search
Since Israel began returning Palestinian bodies to Gaza through the Karem Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) crossing, Hanaa has become one of hundreds of family members moving between hospitals and reception points seeking any clues to the fate of their loved ones.
The latest batch of bodies came on February 4. Gaza’s Health Ministry said 54 bodies and 66 boxes containing human remains, released by Israel via the ICRC, had been received.
The remains arrived at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, where medical and technical teams began initial examinations and documentation before presenting them to families for possible identification.
Human rights organisations say handovers occur through the Red Cross in accordance with international rules, but these procedures do not always include detailed documentation or the circumstances of death, increasing the burden on Gaza authorities to classify bodies and attempt identification amid limited capacity to conduct DNA testing.
Since the latest handover, Hanaa has gone to the hospital several times to review lists and photographs of the bodies.
“I have not left any place without going to it. I even went to Khan Younis in the south of the Strip to check the photos,” she says.
The bodies were returned under the United States-brokered October 2025 truce agreement between Israel and Hamas, which stipulated that the remains of 15 Palestinians would be exchanged for the bodies of every Israeli held in Gaza.
As of last month, Israeli authorities continue to hold the bodies of more than 770 Palestinians in what is known as the “cemeteries of numbers and morgues“, according to the National Campaign for the Recovery of Martyrs’ Bodies and Disclosing the Fate of the Missing.
Hanaa’s suffering does not stop at reviewing Palestinian bodies. She also checks the lists of prisoners released by Israel from time to time, contacting the ICRC to try to confirm if her son’s name appears.
“By God, the Red Cross has memorised me and my voice from how much I call and ask. They tell me: ‘Sister, aren’t you the one who called last time?’ I tell him: ‘Yes, my brother. Forgive me, it is not in my hands.’ He sympathises with me,” she says.
Despite the gruelling effort, there is still no decisive answer about her son’s fate.
“My heart as a mother wishes that my son is alive. But I prepare myself for the worst possibilities, and even this psychological preparation has brought no result,” Hanaa says.
‘Why do they leave us lost?’
Hanaa says the hardest part is not only the loss, but the state of confusion and disorientation she lives through, along with hundreds of members of other families still searching for their relatives.
“Why do they leave us lost like this? We don’t know where they went or what their fate is,” she says.
Another grim aspect is witnessing the “pitiful condition” in which the bodies are returned by Israel’s military. “All the features are completely buried, and I cannot even distinguish my son’s features.”
Hanaa says she believes the mutilation is “deliberate” to increase the pain of Palestinian families. “It is as if they want to leave us in grief for a lifetime … to mourn our children without end,” she says, tears unceasing.
“My son was in the prime of his youth, like a flower, when he was lost. He was preparing to sit for his high school exams with his cousin. What did they do to disappear like this and for us not to know their fate until now?”
Since the war began in October 2023, the fate of bodies held by Israel has emerged as a central humanitarian and legal issue in the conflict. Israel does not publish a unified list of named bodies it holds.
According to a statement by the Red Cross, it has “facilitated the transfer of 360 Palestinian bodies to Gaza since October 2023”, supported the handover of 195 Israeli captives, including 35 deceased, and the return of 3,472 Palestinian prisoners alive.
Only 99 returned Palestinian bodies have been definitively identified, according to the Health Ministry. The rest remain unidentified or are still undergoing identification procedures.
The ministry said some corpses show gunshot wounds to the head and chest, shrapnel injuries, fractures to the skull and limbs, in addition to advanced decomposition – greatly complicating forensic identification.
Appeal for international help
Hanaa called on international organisations to intervene to assist grieving families such as hers to determine the fate of their children.
“We cannot calm down or stabilise psychologically or socially. We are under enormous psychological pressure,” she says.
“They plowed the earth completely and exhumed graves searching for Israeli bodies with equipment and tests. But our children, no one asks about them. By what logic does this happen?”
At Gaza’s forensic department, a small team handles this heavy burden under conditions that exclude tools of “definitive confirmation”, leaving staff and families in a wide space of doubt.
Ahmed Abu Taha, head of the bodies and missing persons files at the Health Ministry, tells Al Jazeera that 120 corpses recently arrived in Gaza via the ICRC. Some came complete, while others were simply bone fragments and other human remains.
Out of the 120, only two bodies were identified, and even those were not scientifically conclusive.
“Confirmatory” tests such as DNA analysis, forensic anthropology, and forensic odontology are unavailable in Gaza’s destroyed healthcare system, meaning only “presumptive” testing can be conducted, which is less precise, says Abu Taha.
“The steps begin with presumptive testing – looking at distinguishing marks, clothes, whether male or female, estimating age, identifying distinguishing features such as amputations or tattoos… Then you move to confirmatory testing. But unfortunately, in Gaza we only have presumptive testing.”
This type of testing “is prone to many errors” including misidentification, he adds.
When error becomes tragedy
The most painful aspect, Abu Taha says, is the impact an “error” has on families waiting desperately to find the body of a missing child. Repeated misidentifications have been recorded, causing shock and reopening wounds for many Palestinians.
Abu Taha recounts one story that deeply affected him and illustrates the psychological and emotional damage inflicted on families amid the absence of accurate DNA tests.
“On one occasion, members of a family came and identified a body as their son. They presented evidence that closely matched the body. The forensic team examined it and found similarities, and indeed the body was handed over to that family.”
Grieving relatives completed the formal procedures for receiving the body, obtained a death certificate, then proceeded with funeral rites and burial. They announced a wake to receive mourners.
But a shock came when, only two days after the burial, another family presented more conclusive evidence that showed the deceased person belonged to them.
Abu Taha says the harrowing incident has been repeated inside Gaza’s beleaguered hospitals.
He is calling for international intervention to pressure Israel to allow the entry of identification equipment and DNA testing tools as an ethical and humanitarian matter to end the suffering of families struggling to identify loved ones and give them a proper burial.
“The file of the bodies is not merely a numerical issue,” Abu Taha says.
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