Where are our sons and daughters? Stories of missing women in Gaza

Main photo of the missing woman Rahma Zaqout—photography by Duaa Shaheen

Duaa Shaheen

In a small tent in a displacement camp west of Gaza City, Abeer, a woman in her forties, sits, exhausted, clutching a faded photograph of a woman in her seventies. The woman in the photo has warm eyes and a reassuring expression. She is Rahma Zaqout, Abeer’s mother-in-law, the grandmother who was the pillar of the family. She disappeared without a trace over nine months ago.

Rahma has been missing since November 6, 2024. There has been no news of her since she fled Beit Lahia in the north of Gaza under a barrage of Israeli bombardment that forced thousands of families to flee their homes in search of a safety they’d never find.

The final departure

“My mother-in-law suffered from chronic illnesses, but the bombing left us no choice. She left, leaning on her elderly husband and her daughter, Mirvat. She could barely walk. She was headed to the west of Gaza City, hoping to find shelter. I’ll never forget the look in her eyes. They were full of tears. She looked exhausted, worried, afraid,” Abeer shares.

“Before saying goodbye, she hugged me and said goodbye to the children. She told them to take care of themselves, and that she’d send them a message when she got to a safe place,” Abeer continues.

But there has been no message from Rahma, no news. Only heavy silence and unanswered questions about her fate.

Abeer adds, “At first, we thought it was due to an outage in the communications network. We kept trying to contact her, but there was no response. We turned to the Red Cross and Civil Defense, but no one had any news. No one in the hospitals had encountered her name, and it wasn’t on the lists of the martyred, nor in the burial records.”

As the bombing continues and thousands of homes are destroyed with their inhabitants still inside, people continue to be displaced, and it has become normal for women to go missing. The suffering is twofold: first because of the war, and then because of the absence of any clear plan on how to save these women or document their fate.

The greatest pain, as Abeer puts it, is legible in the eyes of Rahma’s grandchildren who are waiting for her to return. “They ask me every day: where is grandma?” Since her disappearance, her seventy grandchildren, the sons and daughters of her ten children, continue to wait to be reunited with her: they miss sitting around cups of tea as she tells them stories of her past, as she prays for them endlessly through the night.

The last time Abeer contacted the Civil Defense in Gaza, months ago, they informed her that decomposing bodies had been found near the displacement area, but the lack of DNA testing technology prevented them from confirming the identities of the deceased. “There is no certainty, no definitive news, only waiting… and the pain of waiting,” Abeer concludes.

According to data from the Ministry of Health in Gaza and the Palestinian Center for the Missing and Forcibly Disappeared, women account for approximately 453 of the nearly 4,500 people documented to be missing—about 10%.

The suffering is twofold: first because of the war, and then because of the absence of any clear plan on how to save these women or document their fate.

Ghazi al-Majdalawi, lead researcher at the Palestinian Center for the Missing and Forcibly Disappeared, says the center was created in February 2025 as a final effort to address a question haunting thousands of families in Gaza: Where are our sons and daughters? He adds that the center was established specifically to address cases of missing persons whose fate remains unknown, amid the inability of official bodies to provide any answers or guarantees.

Lost contact

Rahma’s story is one among many. Friends and family of the young journalist Marwa Moslem have lost contact with her since July 8.

“I’m not going to leave… I won’t leave my brothers.” These were the last words the journalist said to her friend Farah before contact with her was cut off, at the time of writing this report.

The three siblings Marwa, Motaz, and Montaser were inside their home in the Tuffah neighborhood in eastern Gaza City when a missile struck the house next to theirs. It took one moment for all sound to be cut off—since then, contact with Marwa has been lost. No messages, no calls, nothing.

Marwa, 29, an aspiring journalist, knew that it was risky for her to stay in her home in Gaza during this war. But she made the decision consciously, to stay by her two brothers despite everything.

Marwa lives with her two brothers. She has been responsible for caring for them since her parents travelled to Egypt for medical treatment before the Israeli war on Gaza. Her close friend Farah al-Majayda, 29, says, “Marwa wasn’t just a media voice we heard on Radio al-Shabab. She was also a fashion designer, a different kind of fighter, one who lived her life from the depths of her heart and who carried the war in her body.”

“When will the world finally act? What needs to happen? Do we need photos of them under the rubble to prove they exist?”

“Marwa and I shared the anxiety, the hunger, the bombing,” she continues. “Our last call was a while before the attack hit. I still can’t believe we don’t have any news of her.”

“Communication with the Civil Defense and Red Cross teams has been ongoing and uninterrupted. But every time, they tell us that the area she was in is high-risk according to the Israeli occupation army, which means it’s impossible to reach her,” Farah adds.

Since Marwa’s disappearance on July 8, her friends have not stopped asking questions about her fate.

“If three trapped civilians, one of whom is a well-known journalist, cannot be rescued, when will the world finally act?” asks journalist Hani Abou Rizq, one of her close friends. “What needs to happen? Do we need photos of them under the rubble to prove they exist?”

Despite the complete silence, there is still one thread giving Marwa’s friends a glimmer of hope. “Five days after the bombing,” Hani says, “Marwa tried to call a relative of hers. But the call didn’t go through because of poor coverage. Is this proof that she’s still alive? Maybe. It’s the only form of proof, at a time when even evidence has become voiceless.”

“We are not asking for the impossible. We just want families to know the fate of their loved ones. Are they still alive? This is the bare minimum of justice.”

We are not asking for the impossible

Ghazi al-Majdalawi, lead researcher at the Palestinian Center for the Missing and Forcibly Disappeared, explains that the center works on documentation, follow-up, and accountability. “We don’t just keep track of who goes missing. We follow the evidence and try to honor people’s rights. It’s a human rights and humanitarian effort, not a technical or administrative one,” he says.

Due to the impossibility of field work amid ongoing military operations, the center launched an electronic platform allowing families to register missing persons. Requests are received daily and are carefully reviewed after direct contact with the families.

Al-Majdalawi notes that the major reasons for which people disappear are military incursions into residential neighborhoods or when people flee and then return to collect basic necessities. The center has also documented cases of disappearance near aid distribution centers affiliated with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which is run by American and Israeli entities in the Rafah and Netzarim areas, highlighting the dangers of moving even for the simplest of needs.

Regarding the challenges they face, he says, “We work under constant pressure and come up against real obstacles—most notably the forced evacuation orders that have affected our headquarters, the complete disruption of communications networks, and the occupation’s refusal to cooperate with any human rights organization. This makes coordination nearly impossible.”

Al-Majdalawi concludes by affirming a simple yet essential demand. “We are not asking for the impossible. We just want families to know the fate of their loved ones. Are they still alive? This is the bare minimum of justice.”

What is the impact of missing women?

Community worker Rima Karajah, who works with a local psychological support organization in Gaza, says that the disappearance of women does not only create an individual shock but also deeply disrupts family and societal structure. “Women in Gaza are not just wives or mothers,” she explains. “They are often the backbones of their families, managing household affairs, looking after the children, regulating daily life even in the most difficult circumstances. When they suddenly disappear without a trace, families enter into a state of psychological and social collapse.”

Karajah notes that many children who have lost their mothers or grandmothers to unknown fates suffer from sleep disturbances, constant anxiety, crying spells, and even significant academic decline.

Psychologically, the state of uncertainty, of not knowing whether a woman is alive, martyred, or missing, leads to what’s known as “suspended grief,” a type of grief that is never fully resolved, which prevents families from saying goodbye or accepting the loss. These are wounds that don’t heal easily. Even after the war ends.