The Israeli newspaper Haaretz said that many Palestinians in the Gaza Strip do not know the fate of their relatives who were detained by the Israeli occupation army, which claims that they have not been arrested or detained, even though the last time they were seen was in the grip of soldiers or during their arrest.

In recent months, Palestinians and human rights organizations have submitted 27 petitions to find out the fate of the missing, most of which have been rejected.

But in some cases, re-examination has led to the discovery that people about whom the military allegedly had no information are in Israeli detention centers or have died.

One such case is that of Abdul Karim al-Shana, who was arrested in late January 2024 while trying to cross a military checkpoint south of Khan Yunis, after the army ordered residents to evacuate and head to the al-Mawasi area, which the army had designated a “safe zone” despite ongoing attacks there.

For 5 months, his family did not hear any news about him and continued to search for him, until they finally received news from a released prisoner who said that he had seen him in the Shikma detention center in Ashkelon, where he had been tortured.

The family tried to arrange a visit with a lawyer for him, but they were told by the Prison Service that he was not being held there, but in Ofer Prison.

Later, when they contacted the military control center for information, they were told that there was “no indication” that he had been arrested or detained.

Denying arrests

In another case, Haaretz reported that two people, Munir al-Faqoui and his son Yassin, were discovered to have died in custody after the army claimed there was “no indication” that they had been arrested. A military police investigation into their deaths was opened and is still ongoing.

There is also a Palestinian from Gaza who was detained by the army at the end of May 2024, and when his family asked the army to determine his location, the request was met with a response stating that “there is no indication of arrest or detention.” However, he was released after about two months and said that he had been detained by the army throughout that period inside the Strip and moved from one place to another.

Another case of disappearance is of a father and his 5-year-old daughter from the Ajur family. The mother reported that she last saw them on 24 March when they were staying in a nearby house near Al-Shifa Hospital in the Al-Rimal neighbourhood of Gaza City, having been evacuated from the Tel Al-Hawa neighbourhood earlier in the war.

"We were under siege for a week, and on the seventh day the soldiers entered our house and immediately started shooting. I was pregnant and was shot in the stomach, my husband was shot in the legs, and my daughter was shot in the shoulder," she added.

According to the grieving mother, the soldiers took her little daughter to another room to treat her injury. “They pointed their guns at me and said: ‘You have to leave the house to the south.’ Then I asked them to give me my 4-year-old son, and I left. Since then, I don’t know what happened to my husband or my daughter,” she said.

When some family members returned home two weeks later, they discovered that it had been bombed, but they did not find any bodies there.

Regarding the Ajur family, the IDF spokesperson responded by saying, “The case described is unknown. We confirm that the father was not arrested and did not arrive at military detention centers.” The military declined to comment on other cases or general allegations about the difficulty of locating detainees.

Criticisms of human rights organizations

In turn, the Center for the Protection of the Individual (HaMoked) filed 27 petitions to reveal the fate of the missing, which in some cases forced the army to acknowledge their detention.

However, the Supreme Court has rejected many of the petitions, prompting accusations that it is “simply buying into” the statements of the military and the prison service without real judicial review.

“Hundreds of people have disappeared after being detained by the military,” said Jessica Montell, the center’s executive director. “The military either refuses to provide information or does not document its treatment of civilians at all, creating a state of injustice.”

Since the beginning of the war, many Gazans have been arrested, some transferred to detention centers in Israel and others held for periods in the Strip, most of them under the "unlawful combatants" law, which currently allows them to be held for 45 days without seeing a lawyer.

For several months, Israel refused to provide any information to the families of the detainees about their fate, and at the same time stopped allowing Red Cross representatives to visit the detention centers.