Gaza Son Found Alive In Israeli Prison After 18 Months Of Mourning

The family of Eid Nael Abu Shaar searched for 18 months, scouring Gaza and the morgues before giving up hope and registering his death. They erected a tent to mourn his death, but then received an unexpected phone call from a lawyer, confirming their eldest son was alive and being held in Israel’s Ofer prison.

That phone call ended an agonizing 18 months of searching, but the fact that he was found highlights the devastating plight of thousands of other families in Gaza, who are still awaiting news of their missing relatives.

Families are left unaware as to whether their loved ones are lying dead under the rubble, or buried in one of the Israeli’s mass graves. However, their missing relatives are often being held in Israeli detention centers, like Ofer, where torture is commonplace and Palestinians suffer indefinite internment, often without any charges.

In the case of Eid, he went missing on December 15, 2024, while he was seeking work to support his family, who lived close to the Netsarim Corridor in central Gaza, known as the “Axis of Death.” The corridor is a strip of land in the Gaza Strip that separates northern Gaza from the south. It has become a place where many Palestinians, including children, have been killed or gone missing.

Eid’s father, Nael Abu Shaar, told Al Jazeera that the search for their son had pushed the family to the brink of despair.

“I slept at the doors of the morgues and hospitals,” he said. “Whenever they announced an unidentified body or a martyr, I would run day and night. I searched Al-Aqsa, Al-Awda and Nuseirat hospitals. I would open the morgue refrigerators with my own hands, looking for any trace of him or his clothes, but found nothing.”

In an effort to find their son, the family reached out to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and human rights groups, but they always hit a dead end. As there was no record of Eid’s detention, the family eventually bowed out and opened a mourning tent, while obtaining official documents classifying him as dead from the Ministry of Health.

Despite this, Eid’s mother wouldn’t give up hope that her son was still alive. “Everyone told me we needed to perform the absentee funeral prayer, but I refused. My heart told me Eid was alive,” Maha Abu Shaar said.

Then, a month ago, there was a glimmer of hope, after a released detainee said he had come across a man named Eid Abu Shaar while in prison. On Monday, the story was finally confirmed by a lawyer, leading to a big celebration in Gaza. At the time, Al Jazeera broadcast scenes of the family and their neighbors distributing sweets, while turning a site of mourning into a celebration of a “miracle.”

However, while Eid’s story is a rare piece of good news among a humanitarian catastrophe, Nada Nabil, Director of the Palestinian Center for the Missing and Forcibly Disappeared, said many more families are living in limbo, wondering if their missing family members might be found.

Nabil told Al Jazeera, “The case of Eid Abu Shaar is part of a much larger pattern. 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.”

Meanwhile, Israel’s denial of information regarding prisoners like Eid is a deliberate military tactic to prolong the pain of Palestinian families. “The occupation intentionally adopts a policy of total secrecy to deepen the suffering and pain of Gaza’s families,” he said. “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.”

Due to this situation, families are suffering a phenomenon dubbed “suspended grief” or “ambitious loss,” which paralyzes the lives of thousands of families, missing their loved ones.

While families who have been able to bury their family members often find a way to move forward, those with no information about their missing relatives are stuck in a “continuous cycle between hope and despair,” according to Nabil.

“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.”

Even worse, families fear that should they report their loved ones as “missing” could lead them becoming a target of a punitive Israeli air strike. “Others worry that publicizing a detainee’s name will lead to more severe torture for the person inside,” Nabil said.

In the meantime, the Abu Shaar household continues to distribute sweets, but their joy is 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.”