In Gaza, registering a death was once—as in most places around the world—a relatively simple administrative task. A body was brought to a hospital, where medical staff issued the necessary paperwork with the civil authorities. This allowed families to update civil records, settle inheritance matters, access bank accounts, apply for assistance, or secure legal guardianship of children.
But amid heavy Israeli bombardment, detention of untold Palestinians, and repeated mass displacement, this all changed. Since October 2023, the systems that identify bodies, record deaths, and settle accounts have been pushed toward collapse. “It is an unfolding legal crisis,” said Ahmed Masoud, head of the legal department at the Palestinian Center for the Missing and Forcibly Disappeared. “Thousands of cases now sit in a legal gray zone.”
Many of these families suspect that their relatives may have been killed but cannot prove it in a way the law recognizes. Other families have seen their relatives taken by Israeli forces but have not been able to confirm that they are detained, or where they are being held, leaving their fate unknown.
Research suggests the problem is widespread. The Palestine Reporting Lab, WIRED’s reporting partner on this story, worked with the Institute for Social and Economic Progress (ISEP), a Palestinian research group, to examine the impact of Gaza’s missing persons crisis. Based on a survey of 600 people across 53 locations in Gaza, ISEP’s best estimate is that more than 51,000 people may have gone missing at some point since October 2023, with roughly 14,000 to 15,000 still unaccounted for.
According to ISEP, over two fifths—42.9 percent—of households with a missing person say they have struggled to obtain a death certificate. Roughly the same percentage report that the missing person was the family’s main breadwinner. Wives of missing men are often unable to withdraw money from bank accounts or access legal documents, pensions, and other benefits in the husband’s name.
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The numbers are overwhelming. Among Gazans reporting a missing household member, 71.4 percent said the disappearance has affected their rights and legal entitlements. Over one in four (28.6 percent) reported difficulties establishing guardianship of a child, while 14.3 percent faced difficulties getting married or divorced. Others encountered financial barriers: A third (33.3 percent) of households said they could not access bank accounts associated with the missing relative, nearly one in five (19.1 percent) reported being unable to access aid reserved for widows or children who have lost at least one parent, and nearly one in 10 (9.5 percent) said they could not access an inheritance. (To estimate the total number of missing people in Gaza, ISEP used quota sampling to survey a representative pool of Gazans in 53 locations across the strip and cross-tabulated the results with existing pre- and postwar data on the Gazan population and household size.)
Samah Al-Shareif, a lawyer at the Gaza-based Women’s Affairs Center, which provides legal support for families, says the group has seen hundreds of cases where a parent couldn’t access aid for themselves or their children because of missing paperwork. She described a woman whose husband had retired before the war. The couple was relying on his pension. But when he disappeared, the woman found herself unable to access his bank account or receive his pension. “The bank has refused to deal with her,” Al-Shareif said, “insisting that she either get a death certificate or present her husband in person.” The woman has been left without income or financial security, despite the husband’s lawful entitlements.
Children whose parents are missing are perhaps even more vulnerable. Nedal Jarada heads Al Amal Institute for Orphans, one of Gaza’s longest-standing social welfare organizations. He says that the group has found itself hobbled by the lack of documentation. Some children believe that their parents have been killed, but their relatives cannot prove it; others simply do not know where a parent is. Jarada calls them “de facto orphans,” a category that has emerged since October 2023.
Al Amal has dealt with hundreds of such cases. The group tries to find ways to support these children by asking adults in their lives to provide evidence that the parent’s fate is unknown—records of inquiries to official bodies, messages sent to human rights organizations, screenshots, or call logs showing attempts to locate the missing.
But such proof is not always available, and Jarada says his institution cannot assist many, as the number of orphans already overwhelms their capacity. “These are the most painful cases,” Jarada said. “For many families, even receiving confirmation that their loved one has been killed is easier than living with complete uncertainty.”
According to Al-Shareif, many wives of the missing face social pressure, suspicion, and isolation. In some cases, the vulnerability created by disappearance exposes women to exploitation. The center has documented cases of wives of the missing subjected to sexual extortion by individuals claiming they can provide support. “These abuses occur because the women are perceived as unprotected—without a partner or social shield—and because they are navigating urgent needs such as financial assistance, documentation, or access to aid,” she said.
The ISEP poll found that 91.7 percent of people with a missing relative reported constant anxiety, while 68 percent said simply knowing their missing relative’s fate would significantly change the family’s life decisions.
Faced with a growing legal crisis of the missing, Gazan authorities proposed a new policy in November to allow families to classify a person as deceased if the person has been missing for more than six months, as a practical response to the mounting number of unresolved cases. But the policy was promptly declared “illegal” by Palestinian Authority judicial officials in Ramallah; under Palestinian law, the PA said, a missing person can only be treated as deceased if unaccounted for for four years.
In January, the Palestinian Authority’s cabinet announced the formation of a national task force to address the growing file of missing persons. The task force, through the Justice Ministry, has launched a digital form for families to log information about the missing. But it has not yet begun work.
Amid Israel’s ongoing blockade of Gaza, and the administrative fragmentation between authorities in Gaza and Ramallah, the question of how to proceed remains unresolved. Some civil society groups in Gaza are pushing for the creation of a comprehensive database of the missing to record and track cases of the disappeared in a consistent, unified system, rather than scattered across various institutions and organizations. Human rights experts say such databases, which include evidence of disappearance and even family genetic samples, need to be managed with transparency and integrity to inspire trust.
Others call for the issuance of a temporary, formalized recognition of the missing—what in other contexts of war, atrocity, and disaster are often called “certificates of absence.” The certificates strike a balance between the rights of the missing—people who by definition may reappear—and the needs of families to access things like bank accounts and government and humanitarian aid, and to move forward with civil and legal processes like marriage or guardianship.
Unlike declaring someone dead, these certificates keep open the possibility of accountability—preserving the obligation under international law for governments to investigate disappearances.
“Without legal mechanisms to recognize disappearance as a distinct status—and without emergency protections for families—wives of the disappeared remain suspended between life and death, responsibility and powerlessness,” Al-Shareif said.
This article was produced in partnership with the Palestine Reporting Lab, a project of Just Vision.
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