Gaza: the impossible duel of nameless bodies

BeirutIn the streets ripped open by bombs and the alleyways where the dust never settles, thousands of Palestinian families live with a suspended grief. The war has not only multiplied death, it has shattered the very possibility of saying goodbye. Bodies pile up in makeshift morgues, in numbered bags, in hastily dug graves. Others remain missing beneath collapsed buildings, reduced to unrecognizable fragments. In Gaza, death has lost its name.

On November 11, Gaza authorities buried 38 bodies returned by Israel in a makeshift plot in Deir al-Balah. They arrived in trucks from the International Committee of the Red Cross, many of them in an advanced state of decomposition. According to figures released by Al Jazeera, of more than 315 bodies returned in recent months, only 92 have been identified. Rescue teams work with their bare hands among concrete blocks, searching for silences that might indicate where a body could be. "Sometimes we find three or four together and we don't know who is who," explains a member of the Civil Defense, quoted by a local Arab media outlet. There is no DNA, insufficient refrigeration, no time. Identification has become an unattainable luxury. Among the missing is Malak al-Hajoj, an engineering student. Her family told The Observer that the last clue was her bag, found next to bulldozer tracks. They don't know if she is alive, if she was detained, or if she lies beneath the ruins of her home. They live in a waiting that never heals: the waiting to receive a body, or something resembling one, so they can bury her and give her a name. Health authorities speak of thousands of cases like hers. More than 11,000 people are officially reported missing, according to figures cited by international sources. But teams on the ground believe the real number is much higher. In areas like the north, entire neighborhoods were razed without anyone being able to register the dead or move them. Many were buried in mass graves, marked only with a row of stones.

Burying quickly became a health and spiritual necessity, albeit at the cost of erasing identities. In the Muslim tradition, a funeral is a communal act; the body is washed, wrapped in a shroud, prayers are said, and the family is accompanied for days. Now, many families bury without knowing who they are burying. Or, worse, they don't bury anyone at all: they wait for a call, a photo, a scrap of information. The slow return of bodies has also strained the political landscape. The Associated Press quoted several Israeli families receiving the remains of hostages in dribs and drabs, in sealed bags, without immediate confirmation of identity. A mother said, "I need something concrete, any part... I need it so I can begin to grieve." This heartbreak, though in different contexts, reflects a shared truth: without a body, there is no farewell, and without a farewell, there is no inner peace.

In Gaza, the lack of forensic resources turns identification into a race against time. Doctors report that many remains arrive unrecognizable after days under the rubble. Others are found by civilians who, unable to preserve them, bury them wherever they can. Photographs taken by neighbors have become a kind of community archive of images of faces swollen with death, sent from phone to phone in the hope that someone will recognize a mole, a T-shirt, a ring.

Among the bodies returned this fall, The National documented, were healthcare workers, Red Crescent volunteers, firefighters, and UNRWA employees who died trying to rescue others. In some cases, their colleagues could only identify them by remnants of uniforms or a personal item. The UN High Commissioner, Volker Türk, spoke of "shock and alarm" and reiterated that attacking humanitarian personnel constitutes a war crime. Gaza is trapped in a devastating paradox, where the dead are everywhere, but the essentials for restoring their dignity—a name, a story, a place to mourn them—are missing. Palestinian NGOs and international organizations are demanding immediate access to burial sites, protection of evidence, and an independent forensic committee to catalog each body before time erases the last clues. They fear that, without this effort, these mass graves will become tombs without memory and that those responsible will never face justice. The UN warns that the proliferation of mass graves could hinder future investigations and exacerbate communal tensions. In a war that has razed buildings, hospitals, and entire neighborhoods, the loss of names adds a profound and intimate devastation. A people who cannot name their dead see their own story emptied. Because mourning, true mourning, only begins when a name returns to its place in the earth.