Gaza – The Palestinian Center for the Missing and Forcibly Disappeared (PCMFD) has expressed its profound concern over the disappearance of 9-year-old child “Jalal Ahmed Al-Bursh” along the “Yellow Line” in the northern Gaza Strip, calling upon all relevant humanitarian bodies to exert every possible effort to investigate the circumstances of his disappearance and determine his fate.
The Center clarified that Jalal has been missing since Saturday, May 30, 2026. Available information indicates that the child went out to play with his siblings in an area near the Yellow Line, where his family currently resides, before vanishing in that same area.
The Center pointed out that the nature of the child’s health condition compounds the threat to his life; his family reported in an official testimony submitted to the Center that their son has autism, is non-verbal, and lacks the capacity to identify or assess surrounding dangers.
Furthermore, the Center noted that the family, currently living in a tent in the “Bir Al-Na’ja” area northern Gaza strip, is facing a harsh humanitarian reality. The child’s father, Ahmed Al-Bursh, stated in his testimony to the Center: “The tent we live in is located one kilometer away from the Yellow Line.” He explained his belief that his son headed toward that restricted area based on cross-referenced indicators. The family’s suspicions grew after the owner of a grocery shop located 100 meters from the line informed them that Jalal had bought a bottle of juice from him before continuing his way toward the area adjacent to the Yellow Line.
The Center noted that intensive and urgent search efforts included summoning civil defense and forensic teams to inspect a neighboring building following the emission of foul odors, out of fear that the child might be trapped under the rubble, before forensics later confirmed that the odor belonged to a dead animal. The child’s father added, describing the scale of the ongoing suffering for over 35 days: “The family is living in immense psychological torment because of this incident, and we have not stopped searching for him for a single moment. What made this matter even more bitter was a phone call from a human rights organization informing us that they had found him. Yet, when we went for the anticipated meeting, we discovered that the child was not our son, plunging the family back into a severe state of grief.”
The Center emphasized that the continuous recording of enforced disappearances persists despite the ceasefire declared since October 2025. Areas near the Yellow Line continue to witness recurrent disappearance incidents, while relevant authorities remain unable to conduct wide-scale search and investigation operations due to security hazards and the Israeli forces’ ban on approaching these zones.
The Center drew attention to the complex geographical and living conditions imposed by the reality of security control and the wide-scale destruction of residential neighborhoods, which has reduced the habitable space in the Gaza Strip to approximately 30% of its total area. Due to the absolute lack of housing alternatives or options, thousands of displaced individuals are forced to reside in areas extremely close to the “Yellow Line” despite its high security risks, resulting in recurrent casualties, injuries, and disappearances in those areas.
In this context, the child’s father detailed accounts received by the family regarding Jalal’s disappearance: “I received testimonies from citizens stating that a child was seen crossing the Yellow Line in the areas of Al-Omari and Al-Jaran toward Al-Qarm and Salah al-Din, east of Jabalia. They were unable to catch up with him due to the danger of those zones, but they confirmed that my son Jalal’s photo matches the child they witnessed in those areas.”
The Center disclosed its estimates that around 1,500 individuals have been subjected to enforced disappearance in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the genocide in October 2023, including approximately 200 children whose fates remain entirely unknown.
The Palestinian Center for the Missing and Forcibly Disappeared demands that concerned international and humanitarian organizations take immediate action to uncover the fate of the child Jalal Al-Bursh and ensure his safe return to his family. The Center also calls upon the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and relevant UN mechanisms to pressure the occupation authorities to disclose the fate of all forcibly disappeared individuals in its custody, or to determine the fate of the bodies of individuals who were killed and whose remains continue to be withheld, in alignment with international legal and human rights principles.
