In a war zone where even mourning is regulated by occupation, the right to bury one’s dead has become a privilege. The Israeli blockade has cut off not only medicine, food and water, but also dignity.
DNA testing kits, essential for identifying the charred and shattered remains of the dead, are blocked from entering Gaza. The result: a brutal ritual of guessing, burying in haste and uncertainty, and living with a grief that has no body to mourn.
On the dusty roads of western Gaza, mothers walk over mass graves, not knowing which patch of earth might hold the remains of their children.
“I step on their bodies every time I go there”
In Gaza, the dead are not merely mourned – they are ushered into the afterlife with a tenderness that binds generations. Funerals are communal acts of love, rituals of farewell that give form to mourning. Families gather to remember. The body is bathed, shrouded, prayed over. A funeral tent is erected. Visitors stream in with verses from the Koran and tears hidden behind quiet greetings.
On the fortieth day, sweets are distributed in the name of the deceased – an offering for the soul’s journey. A year later, a memorial service – the sanawiyyeh – is held. Trees are often planted around the grave, living reminders of the lost. Sons are buried next to fathers. Daughters rest next to mothers. These are not luxuries. They are sacred threads in the fabric of Palestinian life. But all of this – every tender rite, every final embrace – has become impossible.
Israeli bombs tear bodies apart. Names disappear with the flesh. Mass graves swallow them silently. And the DNA kits that might offer a last chance to say goodbye are banned.
The cruelty is complete – not only are Gazans denied the right to live, they are denied the right to grieve.
As with all types of medicine, Israel prohibits the entry of essential medical supplies needed by Gaza hospitals. This blockade has resulted in the deaths of thousands of Palestinians and has prevented the families of the missing from identifying their loved ones due to the lack of DNA testing equipment used to identify bodies through bone or soft tissue analysis.
The prohibition of any form of medication is a crime and a violation of international law in times of war. Although international organizations have attempted to confront this issue, they lack the tools to force the Israeli occupation to stop such actions.
Alternative methods of identification rely on clothing or previous scars on the deceased.
Nasma al-Dahshan was nine years old. She was killed in front of her mother on al-Rashid Street during one of the family’s many displacements. Her mother, Samah, remembers the moment with a cold clarity that borders on paralysis.
Samah and her children set out to evacuate from Al-Shati refugee camp in Gaza to the southern part of the Strip, following instructions from the Israeli military. However, they were stopped during the evacuation and her daughter was killed. The mother, in her thirties, used to work as a seamstress, but the sewing machine she relied on was destroyed when her house was bombed.
“I saw her fall. The soldier pointed his gun at the man who was trying to help us bury her. We had to run. When the ceasefire came, I went back to the spot. She was gone. Her body disappeared like smoke,” Samah said, barely able to breathe.
“I kiss the ground where she fell. I feel like I’m walking over her body every time. I never got to bury her. I carry her grave with me wherever I go,” Samah exclaims.
The trauma has rewritten her internal architecture. She doesn’t dream. She avoids mirrors. She often stops in the middle of a sentence, suffocated by memories.
“What the occupation killed wasn’t just my daughter – it was my lungs. Now I breathe through grief. If there’s a cure, it’s in death. That’s the only silence I long for.”
These are not isolated moments of heartbreak – they are the everyday testimonies of a people living amidst ruins. According to mental health specialist in Gaza, Dr. Ismail Ahl, who has treated hundreds of such cases, the psychological toll of not being able to bury or even confirm the death of a loved one is “beyond ordinary grief.”
“In Gaza, we were already living with what we call pre-war trauma. But this war has shattered even the capacity to suffer. People are not just grieving. They are trapped in a kind of emotional paralysis because there is no closure,” Ahl explains.
“I long for their hunger”
Mohammed Krayra, 46, lost his entire family in an Israeli raid on Al-Shifa Hospital, where they had sought refuge. He had gone out to look for food.
“They were starving. I went to bring them food. Now I am starving for them,” he says, sitting on the steps of a nearby clinic.
His voice cracks as he recalls being brought twenty bodies by overworked doctors, each burned beyond recognition.
“They asked me to identify them. I tried. But I couldn’t. They died twenty times before my eyes. I begged God to let me die with them,” he recalls.
“I didn’t say goodbye. I don’t even remember their last faces. I dig my fingers into the dirt around the hospital – just to touch a memory, a trace, a scent. Anything.”
Krayra avoids people now. He twitches when suddenly spoken to. He hasn’t set foot in a home since.
A War on Memory and Identity
Ahl explains that the lack of DNA identification tools has turned grief into a psychological minefield.
“People can’t move on. Some have seizures, hallucinations, breakdowns. Children become withdrawn. Adults become shadows. Without knowing whether your loved one is dead, missing, or imprisoned, how do you live the next day?” Ahl says.
Sadiya al-Masri, 28, is one of many whose lives are suspended in this purgatory. Her husband disappeared in November after an airstrike leveled the building where he worked in al-Rimal. Rescuers pulled out body parts. None have been identified.
“Some say he was there. Some say he wasn’t. Some say the army took him. I don’t know if I’m a widow or a wife. His family wants his inheritance. I want his voice,” she says, her own voice shaking.
“I can’t sleep. I cry without knowing why. The DNA test could have told me if I should grieve or wait. I burn with a hope that could be a lie,” she adds.
Sadiya barely speaks now. Words weigh heavily on her tongue. She looks through people instead of at them.
Ahl notes that unresolved grief has led to social breakdown.
“Families are breaking up. Fights break out over inheritance. Children carry invisible wounds. Some stop eating. Some stop talking. The war is not just on buildings – it is on the mind, the soul, the family,” he adds.
No closure. No future
International aid agencies say they are overwhelmed. The backlog of unidentified bodies is enormous, and the lack of identification tools has turned morgues into archives of despair. Bodies accumulate and are being buried en masse, unnamed, unclaimed.
“Even if we want to help, we have to stop the war,” Ahl pleads. “We need to recover the stories of the dead so that the living can breathe again.
Until then, Gaza walks with the weight of its loss, in a war that won’t even let its victims rest in peace.
