Gaza Metropolis, the Gaza Strip – For greater than a yr, Ashjan Abdel Aal’s life has been suspended between grief and hope.
Two of her sons, Othman and Sami, have been lacking because the morning of June 29, 2025, after they left their displaced household’s house in Gaza Metropolis – solely by no means to return.
“I would like them to return again,” the 36-year-old says via tears. “I desire a day after I can see them, hug them and listen to their voices.”
Ashjan remembers the final time she noticed them.
The 2 brothers – Othman, who would now be 17, and Sami, 13 – stated they’d head to an help distribution level close to the so-called Netzarim Hall in central Gaza, promising their six-year-old sister Emarat they’d convey her sweets. Ashjan additionally remembers listening to that they could go by the household’s outdated house within the Shujayea neighbourhood of jap Gaza Metropolis – one thing that they had additionally finished beforehand – to convey again a pair of footwear for her.
The Abdel Aal household is without doubt one of the 1000’s to have been compelled from their houses throughout Israel’s genocidal warfare in opposition to Palestinians within the Gaza Strip that has killed greater than 73,340 folks, based on well being officers, and left a lot of the besieged and bombarded territory in ruins. Ashjan, her husband, Rafaat, and their kids discovered shelter at a relative’s home in Gaza Metropolis in April final yr, at a time when starvation, hovering costs and shortages of primary gadgets pushed many individuals to take dangers trying to find meals.
“Folks have been both returning to harmful areas or going to assist distribution factors as a result of that they had no different alternative,” says Rafaat, 41.
On August 1 final yr, the United Nations stated not less than 1,373 Palestinians had been killed whereas searching for meals since late Could 2025 – 859 close to help distribution websites and 514 alongside the routes of meals convoys.
On the day Othman and Sami left, Rafaat was away. He had additionally headed in the direction of United States-backed help distribution websites close to the Zikim space in northern Gaza.
“I used to be there for a day and a half,” he remembers. “Once I returned, my spouse instructed me that the boys had not come again. I grew to become very nervous and began asking about them.”
The household waited via the night, hoping, in useless, that they’d return. On the next day, Rafaat started looking hospitals, displacement shelters and amongst family, however discovered no hint of his sons – since then, the boys’ disappearance has turned the household’s life into an countless seek for solutions.
Conflicting experiences
The primary potential lead got here greater than a month later. A resident of Shujayea instructed the household he had seen 4 our bodies close to their outdated house. Two had been recognized, however the different two had not.
Rafaat says the descriptions he acquired resembled his sons, however the household couldn’t affirm whether or not the our bodies have been Sami and Othman.
Then, two days later got here one other painful message. A relative shared a photograph of an unidentified physique at al-Ahli Arab Hospital, saying it seemed like Othman.
“At first look, I used to be deeply shocked,” remembers Rafaat. “I stated this was my son Othman with 90 % certainty. I went to the hospital, however after I noticed the physique, it was not my son.”
In October 2025, after Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas reached a “ceasefire” deal, Rafaat was in a position to attain the realm close to their outdated house in Shujayea. He discovered solely destruction. “There was a bit of a missile, fragments and a small bone remnant,” he says.
However later, the household might now not entry the realm because it fell behind the so-called Yellow Line demarcating Israeli management inside Gaza.
The search continued via the Worldwide Committee of the Purple Cross (ICRC) and human rights organisations, however no confirmed data was obtainable.
At instances, Rafaat says, the uncertainty grew to become insufferable.
“Throughout many moments, due to the immense psychological strain, I thought of going to the civil registry and requesting official demise certificates for them,” he says. “However even that was not doable as a result of there have been no witnesses or sufficient proof confirming their deaths.”
Hopes and unanswered questions
Months later, in Could, a brand new piece of data rekindled the household’s hopes. Rafaat acquired a telephone name from his spouse’s brother who had been serving to him talk with human rights teams, worldwide establishments and legal professionals.
“He known as me and instructed me {that a} lawyer from contained in the 1948 areas, who introduced herself as somebody following lacking individuals’ instances with human rights organisations and the Purple Cross, had stated that the boys have been alive and in detention” within the Israeli prisons of Ofer and Naqab, says Rafaat.
Ashjan remembers that second. “My husband instructed me, and we hugged one another and cried so laborious,” she says. “We cried as a result of we thought perhaps they have been coming again.”
The data, nonetheless, was by no means formally confirmed. The household tried contacting the lawyer once more, however acquired no response. Al Jazeera additionally tried to succeed in the lawyer, however the telephone numbers offered by the household weren’t working.
“I’m like a drowning individual holding on to any straw,” says Ashjan. “My coronary heart tells me they’re alive. I see them in my desires coming to me and telling me to not cry.”
She says earlier than the boys’ disappearance, Othman, an adolescent on the autism spectrum, would all the time discover when she was unhappy earlier than anybody else. “He would attempt to consolation me in any method he might,” she says. “Due to his kindness, Sami grew to become very hooked up to him. He adopted him in every single place.”
Rafaat struggles to carry again tears as he listens to his spouse describe their sons. He says the boys had tried to assist the household regardless of his objections, going out in quest of help within the hope of bringing meals house.
“Since they left, I really feel like I’m dwelling in a cycle that by no means ends,” he says. “I can’t transfer ahead, and I can’t cease serious about what occurred to them.”
Households trapped in uncertainty
The story of the Abdel Aal household displays a wider battle confronted by many households in Gaza who’re trying to find lacking family amid the absence of confirmed data and the unfold of conflicting experiences.
Gaza’s Authorities Media Workplace estimates that some 11,200 folks stay lacking throughout the territory, together with these believed to be trapped underneath the rubble in addition to others whose whereabouts stay unknown.
Nada Abu Aita, director of the Palestinian Centre for Lacking and Forcibly Disappeared Individuals, says one of many largest challenges in documenting instances of lacking folks is what she describes because the “multiplicity of sources”.
She says the centre’s work is dependent upon speaking with households, gathering particulars about disappearances and documenting the circumstances surrounding every case.
However for households already dwelling via warfare, displacement and loss, not understanding the destiny of a beloved one creates one other layer of struggling.
“They reside in a state of uncertainty that stops them from persevering with their lives and even overcoming their grief for the lacking individual,” says Abu Aita. “Within the morning, they seek for hope that they’ll discover them, and within the night, they grow to be sure that they’ve died.”
She says this painful uncertainty makes households extra weak to data from unofficial sources, particularly when these sources provide the potential of discovering their lacking family.
The dearth of full data from the Israeli facet, even for worldwide teams, leaves some households believing that unofficial mediators or legal professionals might have entry to data that established organisations don’t.
Abu Aita says the centre has acquired many experiences from households contacted by folks claiming to be legal professionals or representatives of organisations who instructed them that their family have been being held in Israeli prisons.
However after analyzing a few of these instances and checking the organisations these people claimed to signify, the centre discovered that a few of these establishments didn’t exist and that some names gave the impression to be fabricated.
“We can’t pressure households to consider or reject this data,” says Abu Aita.
“In lots of instances, households select to consider these experiences, which we classify on the centre as deceptive, as a result of they wish to maintain on to any hope that would convey their son again to them,” she provides, noting that the absence of complete official lists of detainees makes the state of affairs much more troublesome.
Open requests
Pat Griffiths, spokesperson for the ICRC in Jerusalem, says the organisation’s work begins with what is called a “tracing request”.
When a household approaches the ICRC, the organisation collects its contact particulars in addition to details about the lacking individual and any obtainable particulars concerning the circumstances of the disappearance. This permits the organisation to share confirmed data each time it turns into obtainable.
However Griffiths says the method is usually extraordinarily troublesome. “This work is usually gradual, complicated and irritating. Solutions should not all the time obtainable to us to share with households,” he says.
One of many largest obstacles confronted by the ICRC is that it has not had entry to Israeli locations of detention because the begin of the warfare in October 2023, regardless of continued dialogue with Israeli authorities to revive that entry.
“Which means that we’re not in a position to affirm to households those that are detained, like we used to,” says Griffiths.
In instances involving people who find themselves believed to have been killed, Griffiths says there are main challenges associated to looking for stays and figuring out them via forensic strategies. These difficulties, he provides, can delay affirmation for households for months and even years.
“Dwelling in that limbo, of not understanding the destiny or whereabouts of a misplaced beloved one, is a horrible and distinctive form of ache,” he says. “We speak to so many households who’re going via that.”
Griffiths says the ICRC at present has “1000’s of open tracing requests”, however doesn’t publish a particular variety of lacking individuals as a result of the determine modifications each day as new instances are opened and others are closed.
When confirmed data turns into obtainable, he says, the organisation contacts the household that opened the request, whether or not the individual is being held someplace, unable to speak, or, in probably the most painful situation, has died.
“On the finish of the day, households have the appropriate to know the destiny or whereabouts of their family members. Whether or not serving to give them the chance to lastly mourn a loss, or hopefully reconnect or reunite with a beloved one, we do that work for them.”
For Rafaat, each new piece of data now not brings consolation. As an alternative, it prolongs the ache as a result of the household can’t confirm it.
“I don’t wish to hold trying perpetually. I wish to know,” he says. “When an individual has somebody lacking, they can not grieve for them, they usually can’t have fun their return.”
As for Ashjan, she says all she needs “is one sure piece of details about their destiny”.
Together with her voice breaking, she provides: “If they’re lifeless, inform us. If they’re alive, inform us.”
