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 dwelling in Gaza Metropolis – solely by no means to return.
“I need them to come back again,” the 36-year-old says via tears. “I need 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 might head to an assist distribution level close to the so-called Netzarim Hall in central Gaza, promising their six-year-old sister Emarat they might deliver her sweets. Ashjan additionally recollects listening to that they may move by the household’s outdated dwelling within the Shujayea neighbourhood of jap Gaza Metropolis – one thing they’d additionally accomplished beforehand – to deliver again a pair of footwear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 individuals, based on well being officers, and left a lot of the besieged and bombarded territory in ruins. Ashjan, her husband, Rafaat, and their youngsters discovered shelter at a relative’s home in Gaza Metropolis in April final yr, at a time when starvation, hovering costs and shortages of fundamental gadgets pushed many individuals to take dangers looking for meals.
“Folks had been both returning to harmful areas or going to assist distribution factors as a result of they’d no different selection,” says Rafaat, 41.
On August 1 final yr, the United Nations stated no less than 1,373 Palestinians had been killed whereas searching for meals since late Could 2025 – 859 close to assist 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 assist distribution websites close to the Zikim space in northern Gaza.
“I used to be there for a day and a half,” he recollects. “Once I returned, my spouse instructed me that the boys had not come again. I grew to become very fearful and began asking about them.”
The household waited via the night, hoping, in useless, that they might return. On the next day, Rafaat started looking hospitals, displacement shelters and amongst kin, however discovered no hint of his sons – since then, the boys’ disappearance has turned the household’s life into an limitless seek for solutions.
Conflicting stories
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 dwelling. 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 had 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 appeared like Othman.
“At first look, I used to be deeply shocked,” recollects Rafaat. “I stated this was my son Othman with 90 p.c 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 capable of attain the world close to their outdated dwelling in Shujayea. He discovered solely destruction. “There was a chunk of a missile, fragments and a small bone remnant,” he says.
However later, the household might not entry the world because it fell behind the so-called Yellow Line demarcating Israeli management inside Gaza.
The search continued via the Worldwide Committee of the Crimson Cross (ICRC) and human rights organisations, however no confirmed info 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 dying 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 cellphone name from his spouse’s brother who had been serving to him talk with human rights teams, worldwide establishments and attorneys.
“He referred to as me and instructed me {that a} lawyer from contained in the 1948 areas, who offered herself as somebody following lacking individuals’ instances with human rights organisations and the Crimson Cross, had stated that the boys had 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 exhausting,” she says. “We cried as a result of we thought perhaps they had been coming again.”
The knowledge, nevertheless, was by no means formally confirmed. The household tried contacting the lawyer once more, however acquired no response. Al Jazeera additionally tried to achieve the lawyer, however the cellphone 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, a teen 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 manner he might,” she says. “Due to his kindness, Sami grew to become very connected 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 seeking assist within the hope of bringing meals dwelling.
“Since they left, I really feel like I’m dwelling in a cycle that by no means ends,” he says. “I can not transfer ahead, and I can not cease excited 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 looking for lacking kin amid the absence of confirmed info and the unfold of conflicting stories.
Gaza’s Authorities Media Workplace estimates that some 11,200 individuals stay lacking throughout the territory, together with these believed to be trapped below 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 greatest challenges in documenting instances of lacking individuals is what she describes because the “multiplicity of sources”.
She says the centre’s work is determined by speaking with households, amassing particulars about disappearances and documenting the circumstances surrounding every case.
However for households already dwelling via warfare, displacement and loss, not realizing the destiny of a beloved one creates one other layer of struggling.
“They stay 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 turn out to be sure that they’ve died.”
She says this painful uncertainty makes households extra weak to info from unofficial sources, particularly when these sources supply the potential of discovering their lacking kin.
The shortage of full info from the Israeli aspect, even for worldwide teams, leaves some households believing that unofficial mediators or attorneys might have entry to info that established organisations don’t.
Abu Aita says the centre has acquired many stories from households contacted by individuals claiming to be attorneys or representatives of organisations who instructed them that their kin had been being held in Israeli prisons.
However after inspecting a few of these instances and checking the organisations these people claimed to symbolize, the centre discovered that a few of these establishments didn’t exist and that some names seemed to be fabricated.
“We can not pressure households to imagine or reject this info,” says Abu Aita.
“In lots of instances, households select to imagine these stories, which we classify on the centre as deceptive, as a result of they wish to maintain on to any hope that might deliver their son again to them,” she provides, noting that the absence of complete official lists of detainees makes the scenario much more troublesome.
Open requests
Pat Griffiths, spokesperson for the ICRC in Jerusalem, says the organisation’s work begins with what is named 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 in regards to the circumstances of the disappearance. This enables the organisation to share confirmed info at any time when it turns into obtainable.
However Griffiths says the method is commonly extraordinarily troublesome. “This work is commonly sluggish, advanced and irritating. Solutions usually are not all the time obtainable to us to share with households,” he says.
One of many greatest 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.
“Because of this we’re not capable of 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.
“Residing in that limbo, of not realizing the destiny or whereabouts of a misplaced beloved one, is a horrible and distinctive type of ache,” he says. “We speak to so many households who’re going via that.”
Griffiths says the ICRC at the moment has “1000’s of open tracing requests”, however doesn’t publish a particular variety of lacking individuals as a result of the determine adjustments each day as new instances are opened and others are closed.
When confirmed info 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 not brings consolation. As an alternative, it prolongs the ache as a result of the household can not confirm it.
“I don’t wish to preserve wanting without end. I wish to know,” he says. “When an individual has somebody lacking, they can not grieve for them, they usually can not have fun their return.”
As for Ashjan, she says all she desires “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.”
