Palestinians disappear in large number after encounters with Israeli troops

Reem Ajour says she last saw her husband and then 4-year-old daughter in March when Israeli soldiers raided a family home in northern Gaza.

She is haunted by those chaotic last moments when the soldiers ordered her to leave behind Talal and Masaa, both wounded.

Eight months later, the 23-year-old mother still has no answers about their fate. The military says it does not have them. Troops levelled the house where they were staying soon after the raid.

“I am living and dead at the same time,” she said, breaking down in sobs.

Ajour is one of dozens of Palestinians that a legal group, Hamoked, is helping in their search for family members who went missing after being separated by Israeli soldiers during raids and arrests in Gaza.

Their cases a fraction of the estimated thousands who have gone missing during the 14-month-long war highlight a lack of accountability in how the Israeli military deals with Palestinians during ground attacks in Gaza, Hamoked says.

Israeli troops round up and detain men, from dozens to several hundred at a time, while forcing their families away, toward other parts of Gaza.

When people vanish, it’s nearly impossible to know what happened, Hamoked says.

“We’ve never had a situation of mass forced disappearance from Gaza, with no information provided for weeks and weeks to families,” said Jessica Montell, the director of Hamoked.

The missing girl

Four-year-old Masaa Ajour was shot, then separated from her mother

The Ajours were sheltering at a home in Gaza City that belonged to Talal's family after being displaced from their own house earlier in the war. Israeli troops raided the home on March 24, opening fire as they burst in, Ajour said.

Ajour, who was three months pregnant, was shot in the stomach.

Talal was wounded in his leg, bleeding heavily. Masaa lay passed out, shot in the shoulder – though Ajour said she saw her still breathing.

As one soldier bandaged the little girl's wound, another pointed his gun in Ajour’s face and told her to head out of Gaza City.

She said she pleaded that she couldn’t leave Masaa and Talal, but the soldier screamed: “Go south!”

With no choice, Ajour collected her younger son and went down to the street. “It was all in a blink of an eye. It was all so fast,” she said. Still bleeding, she walked for two and a half hours, clutching her son.

When they reached a hospital in central Gaza, doctors treated her stomach wound and found her fetus’ pulse. Weeks later, doctors found the pulse had gone. She miscarried.

An ailing cancer patient

Ailing with cancer, Mahmoud Alghrabli disappeared after raid

The last time the Alghrabli family saw their 76-year-old patriarch, Mahmoud Alghrabli, was when Israeli troops stormed their district in Khan Younis on Feb. 4. The soldiers ordered residents out of the area.

The Alghrablis had to carry Mahmoud, suffering from cancer, out of their building on a chair, his son Ahmed Algharbli told the AP.

After detaining some men, the soldiers ordered the rest to leave. Mahmoud Alghrabli made it to a sand mound near the house. Ahmed Algharbli said his brother went to help the father, but soldiers shouted at him to leave.

“He left our father by force, or he would have been shot,” he said.

The family returned a month later. There was no trace of Mahmoud. Ahmed Algharbli said he “walked meter by meter” searching for traces, finding bones but not knowing whose they were. He keeps them wrapped in a piece of cloth at home.

Milena Ansari, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, said Israel is obligated under international law to document what happens during every home raid and detention. But the military is not transparent about the information it collects on detainees or on how many it is holding, she said.

Hamoked has asked the military for the whereabouts of 900 missing Palestinians. The military confirmed around 500 of them were detained in Israel. It said it had no record of detaining the other 400.