GAZA, (PIC)
In front of the rubble of her destroyed home in Gaza, Majdal Saadallah stands still. She stares into nothing, trying to hold on to the last moment she shared with her eight-year-old son, Ahmad.
“He was laughing,” she says. “Holding his toy, he asked me when he would go back to sleep in his room.” She did not know that would be the last time she saw him.
When the family fled to another house due to the forcible displacement, the house was bombed. And Ahmad remains under the rubble until now, as rescue teams have not been able to reach him.
Majdal’s story is not an exception. It is only one of thousands, holding within it the wider tragedy of missing children in the Gaza Strip. Under a devastating war that has reshaped daily life with brutal force, loss is no longer an event. It has become part of survival itself.
According to the Palestinian Center for the Missing and Forcibly Disappeared, more than 2,900 children in Gaza remain unaccounted for, around 2,700 of whom are still trapped beneath the rubble.
Due to vast destruction, ongoing bombardment, and scarcity of fuel required to power heavy equipment, rescue crews cannot retrieve them.
“The total number of missing people in Gaza ranges between 7,000 and 8,000. Among them are hundreds of children who disappeared under different circumstances,” Nidaa Nabil, director of the center, explained.
Some vanished while trying to reach aid. Others along displacement routes. Others near areas where Israeli occupation forces are deployed.
Loss does not end with those killed under bombardment. It stretches into the routines that war has imposed. Famine gripping the Strip has forced many children into roles far beyond their age. Searching for food. Collecting firewood. Walking toward aid distribution points. Places that promise survival, filled with danger.
Some children were last seen near these points or in areas under military control, and then they disappeared completely. No official information. No answers. This raises concerns of enforced disappearance or detention.
Among them is fifteen-year-old Ibrahim Abu Zaher, who went missing in June 2025 after heading to the Zikim area to obtain food aid.
According to his family and eyewitnesses, Israeli forces surrounded the area and detained a number of civilians. After that, all trace of him was lost.
Unconfirmed reports suggest he was later seen inside the Sde Teiman detention camp, with no official confirmation of his arrest.
Meanwhile, seventeen-year-old Mohammad Abu al Oula has been missing since October 2023 after going out to follow field developments east of Khan Yunis.
His family searched hospitals and morgues and made repeated appeals, but there was no information about his whereabouts.
These cases show how loss now extends beyond bombardment. It reaches into the very spaces of survival. Even the search for food can end in disappearance.
At the same time, the sites of destroyed homes have become something close to mass graves.
The bodies of victims, including children, remain buried under rubble for a long time. There are no technical resources, no equipment allowed in, and no capacity to recover them.
Families are denied the right to bid their martyred sons goodbye or even give them a proper burial.
This reality constitutes a grave violation of international humanitarian law, which guarantees families the right to know the fate of their loved ones, as enforced disappearance is recognized as a crime against humanity, according to human rights groups.
Nonetheless, no effective investigation mechanisms are there as restrictions on the ground continue and the file of the missing remains surrounded by silence.
Amid all this, thousands of families in Gaza live in an open-ended wait. Days pass as a chain of unanswered questions. Mothers who lost their children hold on to only two things. Hope. And fear. They do not know if their children are still alive or if they have already become martyrs.
Childhood in Gaza has been transformed into something harsh and unrecognizable. Bombardment. Hunger. Survival. And at any moment, disappearance.
As the genocidal war continues, the file of missing children stands as evidence of one of the most complex humanitarian crises. The pain does not end with loss. It stretches into waiting that does not end.
