In Gaza, Families Bury Mixed Remains Years After Israeli Strikes Killed Them

Monzer Herz waited 975 days to bury his sister.

Lulu Herz was 23, a translator, married one day before October 7, 2023. The next morning she fled with her husband to Tal al-Hawa in western Gaza City, sheltering with relatives in a four-storey building. On December 18, 2023, an Israeli airstrike hit the building. Twenty-five of the roughly 50 people sheltering there were killed, including Lulu, her husband, and his brother.

Monzer, displaced separately in southern Gaza, learned of his sister's death before the rest of the family did. He told The New Arab he tried to arrange recovery of her body himself, at his own expense, but needed coordination with COGAT, the Israeli military body that oversees civilian access, and could not get it.

Recovery teams reached the site only recently. What came up was not a body Monzer could recognize.

"When it came up, we didn't know if it was her. We pulled out a pile of bones, and the remains had mixed together. We couldn't confirm this was hers," Monzer said.

The family buried the remains in a mass grave alongside everyone else pulled from that address, treating it as a single funeral for people who died together but could no longer be separated in death.

A backlog measured in buildings

Gaza's Civil Defence estimates around 8,000 Palestinians remain under collapsed buildings, a figure spokesperson Mahmoud Basal says other rights monitors believe could run higher once the unrecovered and unidentified are counted. Since operations resumed in late June, teams have recovered 200 bodies, Basal said, with roughly 300 buildings across the Strip still believed to contain victims.

An earlier recovery phase, run with the International Committee of the Red Cross from last November through February, pulled 333 bodies from central Gaza, Gaza City and the north over about 800 hours of labor, before the project was suspended for seven months.

Behind the recovery sits an identification system stripped to almost nothing. Dr. Ahmed Abu Taha, who heads the unidentified remains file at Gaza's forensic evidence department, told The New Arab his staff numbers no more than 15 people, including volunteers.

"We have the confirmatory tests needed for identification, forensic anthropology, bone analysis, dental exams, and DNA testing, the most well-known. None of these are available in the Gaza Strip," Abu Taha said.

He said restrictions on the entry of identification-related materials make the task harder every year.

The mass graves keep coming. On August 20, one was dug in Gaza City for 50 people from the Al-Sawafiri, Al-Batniji, Karam, Herz and other families, recovered from ruins in Tal al-Hawa, Zeitoun, Sabra, Sheikh Radwan and al-Shati. On August 4, thousands gathered to bury 112 members of the Abu Sharia and al-Hasayna families, recovered from a single building in Sabra hit in November 2023. Palestinian officials say that single strike killed 308 members of the two families, including 40 children. Around 157 remain unaccounted for.