Deir el-Balah and Khan Younis, Gaza Strip – Israa al-Areer stares at the big screen like she has done so many times since the bodies began arriving from Israel.

The process is repetitive. Every time the bodies of Palestinians are released by Israel, they arrive at southern Gaza’s Nasser Hospital, where they are photographed by forensic department staff. The pictures of the dead are then displayed on a screen in a large hall where families and friends of missing Palestinians watch on.

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As one picture changes into the next, those in the hall strain to recognise their loved ones, in the hope that they’ll be able to give them a proper burial and have some closure.

Israa is not looking for just one, but two people – her husband, Yasser al-Tawil, and her brother, Diaa al-Areer. She believes both of them are dead.

Contact with both of them was lost on October 7, 2023 – the day the war in Gaza started. They are believed to have been near the border fence with Israel when the fighting began, and have not been heard from since.

Israa began her now regular journey from her home in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah to the hospital in Khan Younis on October 14, four days after the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas began. Israel handed over 45 bodies that day as part of the deal, with more returning in the days since.

“My mother and mother-in-law entrusted this painful mission to me, along with my brother and brother-in-law, saying they couldn’t bear to see the scene,” Israa said. “I couldn’t believe I had reached this point in my life: searching among the dead for my husband and brother, just to bury them and have a grave and a memory.”

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But the scene that would greet Israa – and the dozens of others staring at the screens – was horrifying. Many of the bodies have decomposed, and many show signs of torture and abuse. The Israeli army has largely not provided any biographical information for the bodies it has sent to Gaza.

“They were the hardest moments of my life. Each image made me gasp in horror at what they did to the bodies,” Israa said. “I nearly lost my mind comparing the image of my beautiful husband in my memory with the horrific photos on that screen.”

“I saw bodies with stones, sand, and nails stuffed into their mouths. Some were blindfolded and handcuffed. Some had their fingernails or fingers cut off. Some had limbs missing. Others looked like they’d been run over by tanks,” she added. “It was savage, inhuman torture, nothing I ever imagined seeing. I cried all the way home, feeling my heart had burned completely.”

The session went on for four hours, but despite repeatedly trying to analyse each photo, it became clear that Yasser and Diaa were not among them.

Disappearance

Yasser, who was in his early 30s when he disappeared, typically spent his Friday night with his friends before coming back home in the morning.

Israa therefore last saw her husband earlier on Friday, which happened to be October 6, 2023.

“That night everything was normal,” said Israa. “I called him before I went to sleep, about one in the morning. Our only daughter, Abeer, four years old, had a fever. He reassured me that he would be home by 6am.”

Israa woke up on Saturday to the sounds of rockets and bombing.

“I couldn’t believe what was happening. I was terrified and immediately tried calling my husband, but his phone was unreachable,” she recalled.

“I had no electricity or internet to understand what was going on, so I went to my neighbour’s apartment to follow the news. That’s when I realised the scale of what was happening,” said Israa, who works as a journalist.

Israa tried to call Yasser, but wasn’t able to get through. Hours later, she was finally able to reach one of Yasser’s friends. He told her the group of friends had been curious and gone to eastern Khan Younis, near where they live, when they heard about the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel.

But then, in the midst of the chaos in the border region, they had gotten separated. The friend didn’t know what had happened to her husband.

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“His words shocked me. I was terrified and kept wondering why he went there,” Israa said sorrowfully. “The situation that day was chaotic; many civilians crossed the border areas with Israel on October 7.”

To make matters worse, Israa’s family also informed her that her 24-year-old brother, Diaa, had gone missing too after going to the border area with his friends.

As the situation worsened, one of Yasser’s friends advised Israa to search the nearby hospitals for him among the wounded or the dead.

“I left my daughter with my neighbour and went myself, running among the bodies in the hospitals,” Israa said, swallowing her tears. “My heart was breaking. I couldn’t believe that my husband might be dead or one of those bodies.”

But she didn’t find her husband among the wounded or the killed. Her family, who searched for her missing brother in Gaza City’s hospitals, found nothing either.

“I came back home completely broken. Nothing terrified me more than losing my husband and my brother on the same day without knowing anything about them.”

Israa describes the crushing loneliness she felt spending the night at home with her only child for the first time since marrying in 2019.

“Our life was happy, rosy in every sense. Yasser was a loving husband and a kind father, very generous with us. Losing him broke my heart completely,” Israa said, as she wept.

Endlessly searching

In the two years since, Israa has not been able to grieve for Yasser or Diaa. Her family has contacted the Red Cross and the Palestinian Ministry of Health, but has not received any information. There may be a small chance that the two have been detained, but Israa and her family believe that it is more likely that they are dead.

As the war dragged on, Israa and her family, like almost everyone else in Gaza, were caught in the tragedy of displacement and fear, moving more than nine times across the enclave.

The pain of war often made her think that perhaps her husband and brother were spared the unbearable suffering she was enduring.

“But the burden fell on me,” Israa said sorrowfully. “I decided to return to work as a freelance journalist with international and Arab outlets, to occupy myself and stop drowning in grief.”

The ceasefire deal brought back the possibility that Yasser and Diaa could finally be found.

Since her fruitless journey on October 14, Israa has repeatedly returned to Nasser Hospital.

The process is the same – she sits looking at the big screen, and then reviews the photos again on the Ministry of Health website whenever there is internet access.

But the condition the bodies were in made it difficult to recognise them, often causing confusion.

“We would ask the staff to go back to a photo, to zoom in on a hand or a body part to be sure. Everyone was on edge, clinging to the faint hope of finding their loved one,” Israa said.

“There was a mother next to me who screamed when she recognised her son from his clothes. She collapsed in tears, but there was relief; they had finally found him,” Israa recalled. “I was happy for her, even through my pain. I kept looking carefully at the hands of the bodies, searching for my husband’s wedding ring.”

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Once, Israa was convinced one of the displayed bodies was her husband’s. “I examined every detail and was sure it was him. I went to the hospital full of hope to finally bury him. But when they checked the body, the underwear and body shape didn’t match.”

The forensic department required clear identifying marks before releasing any body to families.

“I witnessed three families arguing over one body, each convinced it was their son,” she said. “Finally, one father proved it was his, showing evidence of an old injury on the foot. The forensic doctors confirmed it and handed it over.”

“It’s an unjust world,” Israa added. “To identify the Israeli bodies held in Gaza, full excavation and detection equipment were brought in, yet not even a single DNA testing device is allowed to enter here, while dozens of bodies are buried every day without identification. What kind of logic is that?”

Israa describes this time as unbearably painful. Friends and relatives begged her to stop torturing herself and rest after she searched through yet another group of bodies that had been delivered.

“They told me, ‘Have mercy on yourself, we’ll bury you before we bury your husband. Stop this,’” she said. “But deep down, I couldn’t. What if my husband or brother were among those bodies and no one recognised them? I could never forgive myself.”

“All I want is to honour them with a burial.”