In Gaza, some mothers still set an extra place at the table because they cannot bring themselves to accept that their children are gone, while others visit mass graves unsure whether the bodies they are searching for are even there.
The brutal Israeli offensive on Gaza has not only killed more than 72,700 Palestinians, but also left countless families trapped in suspended grief, with no bodies to bury, no graves to visit, and no chance to say goodbye.
Amid pulverised buildings, mass graves, and bodies reduced to unidentifiable fragments, hundreds remain missing as their loved ones live suspended between hope and the certainty of loss.
These are the stories of Sabreen Baraka, Areej Saleh, and Mohammad Kamal — three people from Khan Younis united by the same pain: not knowing where their loved ones are and never having had the chance to say goodbye.
‘Until I bury my son, he is still alive’
When Sabreen Baraka, a 49-year-old Palestinian mother, speaks of her missing son, she doesn’t use the past tense. She speaks of Ihab as if he could still walk through the door at any moment.
“Ihab is a part of me, a part of my heart. I have lost a part of my heart,” she says.
More than two years have passed since she last heard from him, but for her, time stopped on October 14, 2023 — the day Ihab disappeared during an Israeli air strike in Khan Younis’ so-called “yellow line,” one of the most devastated areas in southern Gaza.
Related
Since then, there has been no body, no funeral, no grave. Only questions that repeat themselves over and over inside her head.
“What about Ihab? Where is my son? Where is his body? Who found him? Who buried him?”
His family began a desperate search through hospitals and medical centres where remains recovered from bombed areas were being taken, but there was nothing they could identify — only bones, skulls, and mutilated body parts.
“Even if one of those bodies had been Ihab, how could I recognise him?” Sabreen asks.
The experience also ended up destroying her husband’s health, who suffered a collapse after weeks of facing those scenes.
But Sabreen could never accept what everyone was beginning to assume: that Ihab was probably dead.
“My mind refuses to accept that Ihab was martyred. As long as I haven’t buried my son, he is still present and alive,” she says.
It was not until a temporary truce in November, a month after his disappearance, that the family was able to return to the place where Ihab was last seen.
They searched through shattered streets and buildings reduced to rubble, but found nothing — the area had been completely razed by Israeli military machinery.
Two months later, in December 2023, another of Sabreen’s sons, Mohammed, was killed in an Israeli attack. But this time was different: they were able to recover his body, say goodbye, and bury him.
“That gesture — seeing the body, praying over it, knowing where he rests — made all the difference in how we carried the pain.”
“When I go to Mohammed’s grave, I feel peace,” Sabreen says.
“I feel like I’m sitting with him. But Ihab doesn’t have a grave. I’m always lost, always looking for him.”
The absence of a body freezes the grieving process and prolongs the pain, she says.
Like the Baraka family—whose surname means “blessing” in Arabic—thousands of families in Gaza live trapped in the agony of not knowing where their loved ones are, not knowing if they are alive or dead.
“I long to be reunited with my children one day,” Sabreen says. “Whether it’s on this earth or in heaven.”
‘How do you say goodbye?’
In early December 2023, Mohammed Saleh disappeared. He was 29 years old, the father of two young children, and married to a 22-year-old woman.
By then, the family had already been displaced multiple times by Israeli bombardment in Khan Younis, forced to flee their home along with thousands escaping attacks across eastern Gaza.
Areej, his sister, says that on the day he disappeared, Mohammed had gone out to look for bread and milk for displaced families near Bani Suheila.
It had only been days since a brief truce collapsed and Israel intensified its genocidal offensive on southern Gaza.
Mohammed never came back. Then the phone calls started.
“Where is Mohammed?”
At first, the family believed he might have taken shelter elsewhere or lost contact amid the chaos. They searched for him among relatives, friends, and hospitals.
Soon after, reports began emerging of a bombing near the area where he was last seen, but the family refused to believe he was dead. For days, they clung to the hope that he had been detained or was still alive.
“We never expected him to be added to the death toll,” Areej explains.
“He had been with us just a few hours before. How could we have imagined that in a single instant he had disappeared forever?”
The search was interrupted when Israeli tanks entered Khan Younis and the shelling intensified, forcing the family to flee once again.
For months, they searched detainee and missing persons lists, until they finally confirmed that Mohammed was not being held in any Israeli prison.
Related
“How can you say goodbye to someone who is absent?” he asks.
Later, they were informed that he had been buried alongside other unidentified bodies in a mass grave. However, during a raid on Nasser Hospital, the family lost the exact location of the grave.
Now, Mohammed’s mother visits a mass grave without knowing if her son’s body is actually there. “We don’t know which of the bodies is his,” Areej says. “We only know that he’s probably among them.”
