Introduction This paper outlines the field, logistical, and legal factors preventing the issuance of accurate and comprehensive statistics regarding the numbers of missing and forcibly disappeared persons in the Gaza Strip. It addresses their demographic distribution (children/women) and the locations of their disappearance. These factors constitute structural barriers facing documentation teams and legal units.
1-Geographical and Field Access Constraints
Military Control and Buffer Zones: Approximately 56% of the Gaza Strip is under Israeli military control or classified as buffer zones where access is prohibited. This restriction prevents Civil Defense, paramedics, and legal teams from recovering bodies or conducting accurate documentation in those areas.
Scale of Destruction and Debris Density: Extensive shelling has destroyed over 70% of homes and civilian infrastructure across Gaza, resulting in the accumulation of more than 70 million tons of rubble. The severe lack of heavy machinery and fuel makes it technically impossible to verify whether an individual is missing under the rubble, detained, or displaced elsewhere.
Decomposition of Remains: The presence of bodies under rubble for months leads to near-complete decomposition. This erases identifying features and makes identification impossible without complex DNA testing, which is currently unavailable.
2-Detention Policies and the Handover of Remains
Secrecy of Detainee Data: Israeli authorities refuse to disclose the names of hundreds of citizens who disappeared during displacement from the north to the south or those arrested from shelters. Information regarding their places of detention or health status remains withheld.
Handover of Unidentified Bodies: Israel returns remains of individuals detained during the war or bodies seized from cemeteries in a state of advanced decomposition. This forces medical teams and families to bury them in mass graves without the ability to determine gender, age, or identity. Out of 480 bodies returned, the Ministry of Health buried 377 without identification.
Desecration of Mass Graves and Theft of Remains: Approximately 93% of cemeteries in Gaza have been destroyed or bulldozed. During these operations, hundreds of bodies were seized, leading to the dispersal of remains and the loss of markers placed by families, rendering future matching efforts extremely difficult.
3-Social and Logistical Challenges (Information Systems)
Collapse of Information Infrastructure: Power outages, internet blackouts, and the destruction of health and governmental headquarters have halted data updates. Furthermore, the total eradication of entire families from the civil registry means no one remains to report their missing members.
Repeated Displacement and Family Separation: Frequent evacuation orders and communication failures have caused families to lose contact with relatives without knowing if they are trapped, detained, or killed.
Emergency and Rapid Burials: Many victims killed during displacement or in their homes were buried by “strangers” to preserve the dignity of the deceased. These burials often occur without identification or notification of kin, leaving their fate unknown to their families to this day.
4-Erasure of Digital Evidence and Documentary Memory
Destruction and Confiscation of Mobile Devices: Thousands of smartphones containing the last known photos and videos of the missing have been destroyed by shelling or confiscated at military checkpoints. These devices often represent the sole evidence of an individual’s last known location.
Damage to Local Surveillance Systems: Shelling has destroyed residential and commercial camera systems that documented raids or abductions. Power outages have further disabled these systems, leading to the loss of crucial visual evidence that could identify those responsible for the disappearances.
Conclusion
The absence of precise data regarding the number, demographic type, and location of the missing is not merely a technical failure; it is the result of a complex intersection of direct military operations, the collapse of information infrastructure, and policies of enforced disappearance.
Recommendations: This paper recommends the formation of an international fact-finding committee and the facilitation of forensic laboratory equipment entry to ensure the right of families to know the fate of their loved ones.
Note: The attached figures are based on the latest updates from OCHA, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, the Government Media Office, and the Ministry of Health in Gaza.
