For Samar Doghmosh, a Palestinian woman from war-torn Gaza, every day begins with the same question: Is her 11-year-old son Mu'taz alive or dead?
In December 2024, Mu'taz left his family's tent in eastern Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza, to fetch water. He never returned. Nearly two years later, his mother is still searching for an answer.
"Some people tell us he was killed and that stray dogs devoured his body. Others say he was injured. The last person who saw him said he was arrested by the Israeli army," Doghmosh told The New Arab.
The family contacted the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) after Mu'taz disappeared, hoping the organisation could determine whether he had been detained or locate information about his whereabouts.
So far, they received no answer.
"I feel fear and anxiety, and my life is no longer the same. Everything has changed. A piece of my heart is missing. I don't know what happened to him or whether he is alive or dead," she said.
Mu'taz is among hundreds of Palestinian children who disappeared during Israel's genocidal war on Gaza. Some went missing during bombardments and displacements. Others are believed to be beneath destroyed buildings, and families say some may have been detained after being last seen in areas under Israeli control.
In northern Gaza, journalist Ahmed al-Borsh and his family have been living in a tent in the Bir al-Na'ja area, around one kilometre from the so-called "Green Line", the 1949 armistice boundary that is supposed to separates Israel from Gaza.
On 30 May 2026, his six-year-old son Jalal, who has autism spectrum disorder, went outside to play. He never came home. The family immediately began searching.
A shopkeeper around 100 metres from the "Green Line" told them he had seen the boy buying a bottle of juice before walking towards an area near the boundary.
They searched damaged buildings and surrounding areas and sought assistance from civil defence and forensic teams. At one point, a smell coming from a nearby destroyed building raised fears that Jalal's body could be trapped beneath the rubble.
The family called for the site to be examined, only to discover that the smell had come from a dead animal.
After 35 days came a phone call that briefly appeared to offer the answer they had been desperately waiting for.
A UN agency contacted al-Borsh and told him that a child believed to be Jalal had been found, asking him to come and identify him.
"I went there with my heart filled with anticipation that I would finally see my son," al-Borsh told TNA. "But I returned with another shock. The child was not Jalal."
The mistake deepened the family's anguish.
"We haven't stopped searching for him for a single moment," he said. "What made it even more bitter was receiving that call and being told that he had been found, only to discover that the child wasn't our son."
Jalal's mother searched through destroyed houses and across neighbourhoods whose landmarks have been erased by the war.
"I left no stone unturned. I searched every neighbourhood in the city for Jalal. I call out to him every day," she told TNA.
"We live day by day, but our hope in Allah remains. All I want is to know his fate. If he is alive, may Allah protect him, and if he is dead, may Allah have mercy on him."
Doghmosh and al-Borsh are not alone. On Monday, they joined dozens of Palestinian families in a sit-in in Gaza City demanding information about their missing children and those they believe were arrested during the war.
The families held photographs of their sons and daughters, demanding more than statistics or promises. They want to know where their children are, what happened to them and, if they are dead, where their bodies can be found.
For families of missing children, disappearance creates a particularly cruel form of grief. They cannot accept their child's death without confirmation, yet they cannot resume their lives while holding on to the possibility that the child may return.
Rawan Ahmed, a psychologist from Gaza, described the experience as "ambiguous loss", a form of grief in which there is no certainty that a loved one is dead or alive.
"The family remains trapped between hope and fear, unable to begin mourning and unable to stop waiting," she told TNA
"The uncertainty can lead to chronic anxiety, sleep problems, persistent stress, helplessness and guilt," she said. "War and displacement intensify the trauma, as families search through rubble while facing insecurity, communication outages and a lack of reliable information."
The psychological impact can also extend to siblings, who may become increasingly afraid that they too could be separated from their parents.
"Knowing the child's fate, even if the outcome is painful, is psychologically better than leaving the family in indefinite waiting," she added. "Information gives the family a chance to cope with reality, while not knowing keeps the wound open."
Yet Gaza still lacks a comprehensive database capable of determining the fate of all those who have disappeared since the war began.
The Palestinian Ministry of Justice said last April that more than 11,200 Palestinians had gone missing or been forcibly disappeared since October 2023, including more than 4,700 women and children.
A more recent estimate by the Palestinian Centre for Missing and Forcibly Disappeared Persons put the number of people believed to remain beneath destroyed buildings at between 4,000 and 5,000.
Another 2,500 to 3,000 cases show signs of possible enforced disappearance by Israel, although the estimate is based on a sample of 317 cases and does not represent all disappearances in Gaza, the Palestinian Centre said in a press statement.
The uncertainty reflects the different circumstances behind each disappearance. A person may have been killed in a strike, buried beneath rubble, separated from their family during displacement or detained without relatives being informed.
Recovering bodies from destroyed buildings has become a major challenge in itself.
Gaza's rescue teams face shortages of heavy machinery, fuel and specialised equipment as enormous quantities of rubble cover the Strip.
In July, the second phase of a project to recover Palestinian bodies began in cooperation with the ICRC.
After 381 hours of work, teams recovered the bodies and remains of 233 Palestinians from among 407 people reported missing beneath the rubble of 20 homes. The recovered remains included 73 children and 106 women.
But every unrecovered body leaves another family suspended between hope and grief.
For families whose relatives were last seen in areas under Israeli military control, the search also raises questions about detention and enforced disappearance.
Gaza-based political analyst Ahed Ferwana told *TNA *the disappearance of Palestinians, including children, should be examined within a wider context, particularly when families have testimony that their relatives were last seen after Israeli forces took control of an area.
"Keeping the fate of some Palestinians unknown, if their arrest or detention is confirmed, can become a form of psychological pressure on families who remain unable to determine whether their children are alive or dead," he said.
He stressed, however, that cases involving evidence or testimony of arrest must be distinguished from other disappearances, including those of people believed to be buried under rubble or separated from relatives during displacement.
"Establishing responsibility in each case," he said, "requires independent documentation and investigation."
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