‘Back from the dead’: The continuing agony over Gaza’s 9,500 missing people

Gaza — With thousands of families in Gaza yet to reconcile with the disappearances of their loved ones, the return of Hamada al-Banna alive has shocked the Palestinian enclave.

Believing he had been killed in Israel’s genocidal war that began in 2023, al-Banna’s family held a wake for him nearly a year ago.

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His story underscores the suffering of thousands of families who still await the return of their loved ones – or any information about them.

The Ministry of Health in Gaza says it has received nearly 3,500 reports of missing people while rights groups, including Gaza-based Al-Dameer, estimated the number of missing to be 9,500.

Frantic search and a blast

Al-Banna’s nightmare began during a desperate trip to find aid for his family near the Zikim crossing in northern Gaza, where he was separated from his brother Adham Yasser al-Banna in the enormous crowds. Adham was ultimately fatally shot by the Israeli army.

“I was going home carrying a bag of flour. I was holding it, carrying it back, happy that I had managed to get it,” he said. “Then, suddenly, someone called me and said, ‘Your brother has been killed.'”

Al-Banna had lost another brother, Amjad, only a month earlier. He refused to believe he had suffered another loss. But after the caller swore it was true, he dropped the bag of flour and rushed to search for his sibling.

“Suddenly, there was another huge explosion,” he said. “I was wounded in my legs, my hands, my chest and abdomen. My whole body was injured.”

Al-Banna lost consciousness and woke up two months later from a coma at Israel’s Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba. He spent six months there, receiving treatment before being transferred to an Israeli prison, where he was held in solitary confinement for four months.

“Of course, I saw torture and suffering. No matter how much I tell you, I won’t be able to describe what I went through,” he said. “For me, death felt better than remaining under the torture and suffering I was witnessing.”

‘Are you making fun of me?’

After a year in Israeli captivity, al-Banna was finally released about two weeks ago. During his absence, his fiancee, Reem Jadallah, never stopped searching for him, holding on to the possibility of his survival despite all indications pointing to his death. She sold her gold jewellery to hire a lawyer to track his case after failing to obtain official information regarding his whereabouts.

After six months of searching, the lawyer informed the family that al-Banna had been killed. Plunged into grief, the family held a three-day wake about two months before his eventual release.

After he was freed, al-Banna made his first phone call to his father.

“I said, ‘Dad, it’s Hamada.’ He replied, ‘Who is Hamada? My son was killed. We held a three-day mourning ceremony for him,'” al-Banna told Al Jazeera.

“I started crying and kept telling him, ‘It’s Hamada.’ He said, ‘Are you telling me you’re alive? My son was killed. Are you making fun of me?'”

Al-Banna called again, this time instructing his father to send a car to the port because he was arriving with the Red Cross.

When he finally walked through the door of his family’s home, his mother fainted in his arms.

“Even now, every day, she looks at me and says she can’t believe I’m here. She tells me, ‘My son, we held a mourning ceremony for you. We had lost hope of ever seeing you again, just like your brothers who were killed,'” he said.

As he settles back into his home, the trauma of Israeli prisons continues to haunt him.

“When I sleep, I dream that I am still in prison. Every day, I pull shrapnel out of my body. My leg hurts, and so do my testicles, my heart, everything,” he said.

“Yes, I am free now, but I am not the person I used to be.”

‘They miss him’

Al-Banna may have returned home, but thousands of other Palestinian families remain trapped between hopes of their missing loved ones being alive and fear that they are dead.

Among them is the family of Nafez Abed.

“Waiting for the fate of a prisoner is more cruel than receiving the news of martyrdom,” Abed’s mother, Aziza Abed, said, explaining that the family remains suspended between possibilities without any reassuring information to end their relentless doubt.

For his wife, Shaimaa Jundiya, and their four children, Abed’s absence has left a hole that she said is impossible to fill. She said they miss him in the smallest details of their daily lives, adding that their daughter constantly prays for his safe return, looking with sorrow at every father carrying his child in the street.

Meanwhile, in Gaza’s public squares, the families of the missing organise sit-ins, holding pictures of their loved ones and demanding an official disclosure of their fates.

Abdullah Qandil, director of the Waed Association for Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners, said thousands of families have appealed to international organisations to pressure Israel into providing information about Gaza’s missing.

Qandil said the absence of information “exacerbates the psychological and humanitarian suffering” of the families forced to live between hope and fear.