After 18 months of mourning, a Gaza son is found alive in an Israeli prison

Eid’s story is providing a rare bit of good news during a humanitarian catastrophe, but Nada Nabil, director of the Palestinian Center for the Missing and Forcibly Disappeared, said many more families are stuck in limbo. “The case of Eid Abu Shaar is part of a much larger pattern,” he told Al Jazeera. “We estimate that between 7,000 and 8,000 Palestinians are currently missing due to the war, with approximately 1,500 of them believed to be forcibly disappeared inside Israeli prisons.”

Israel’s denial of information regarding detainees like Eid is not an administrative oversight but a deliberate military tactic to prolong the pain of Palestinian families, Nabil said. “The occupation intentionally adopts a policy of total secrecy to deepen the suffering and pain of Gaza’s families,” he explained. “It is an easy procedure to issue lists of detainees or allow the ICRC access, but they choose concealment as a form of psychological torture and collective punishment.”

The burden of ‘suspended grief’

The situation has led families to experience a phenomenon known by psychologists as “suspended grief” or “ambiguous loss”, which paralyses the lives of thousands of families who have missing loved ones. Families who have buried their relatives often find a way to move forward, but those who have no information about their loved ones’ fates remain locked in a “continuous cycle between hope and despair”, Nabil said.

“This impact isn’t just psychological. It’s social and legal,” Nabil added. “Wives do not know if they are widows or still married, affecting issues [such as] remarriage and inheritance. Furthermore, in the harsh conditions of displacement in Gaza, where every hand is needed to fetch water or set up tents, the loss of a young man like Eid places an immense physical and economic burden on the remaining family members.”

International paralysis and fear

Nabil described the “total failure” of international organisations operating in Gaza and how the ICRC has been barred from visiting Israeli prisons or receiving lists of detainees since the start of Israel’s genocidal war on Palestinians in Gaza. “We live in a world governed by power, not law,” Nabil said. “The global inability to compel Israel to follow international humanitarian law has left the victims in Gaza vulnerable to every kind of violation.”

Perhaps most tragically, families fear that reporting their loved ones “missing” could make them the target of a punitive Israeli air strike. “Others worry that publicising a detainee’s name will lead to more severe torture for the person inside,” Nabil said.

In the Abu Shaar household, the distribution of sweets continues, but the joy remains incomplete. “I am happy, but now my heart is even more worried,” Maha said. “Now that I know he is alive, I fear for what he is suffering in those cells. I won’t be fully happy until I hold him in my arms again.”

While overjoyed upon hearing her oldest son is alive, Maha Abu Shaar is also deeply worried about his treatment in prison in Israel [Screengrab/Al Jazeera]