Remains of a human skeleton were found on Sunday under the rubble of a house in the Gaza City’s eastern neighborhood of Shujayya, which was devastated by an Israeli ground incursion during the most recent Israeli military offensive in the summer of 2014.
The discovery of the two-year-old remains has brought back to the surface difficult memories for the families of Palestinians who were declared missing during the war, which left more than 2,000 Palestinians dead, including at least 1,462 civilians according to the UN.
Human rights groups reported that numerous Palestinians went missing during the 51-day military offensive. Some were later found, either alive or dead, although the fate of many others remains unknown.
Among those still missing two years later is Noor Omran, who disappeared after Israeli ground troops invaded the town of al-Qarara in the Khan Yunis district in the southern Gaza Strip.
On the night of July 23, 2014, then 16-year-old Noor got on his motorcycle to go to the family’s poultry farm, unaware that Israeli troops had just invaded and taken over that area, his brother Muatasim recalls.
Noor did not come back that night, and his family hasn’t heard from him since.
His family searched the farm he was supposed to visit over and over, with the hopes of finding a body or remains, but every search left the grieving family empty-handed. All that remained was his motorcycle, untouched, with no signs of gunshots or blood.
“He seems to have left the motorcycle and taken the keys with him. This motorcycle remains a witness to the last place he was before he disappeared,” Muatasim says.
According to Muatasim, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has tried to help the family find Noor, by taking DNA samples from the family and submitting them to Israeli authorities to see if they were holding him prisoner or withholding his body -- to no avail.
“It’s likely that the issue of missing persons, including my brother, is tied to the issue of Israeli soldiers held in Gaza,” Muatasim says, referring to the Israeli soldiers who disappeared during the 2014 war, and have been held as a bargaining chip between Hamas and the Israeli government.
The two Israeli soldiers at the center of prisoner negotiations, Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul, were pronounced dead during the 2014 war, as Hamas later claimed to be holding their bodies.
The two soldiers’ families in November demonstrated to pressure the Israeli government to halt the return of all Palestinian bodies -- including those of Palestinians from occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank killed since October -- until Hamas turned over the soldiers’ bodies.
The Omran family says it has been suffering since Noor's disappearance, and that it would be "a thousand times easier" to have learned that the teenager had died a “martyr” than to remain in the dark about his fate for two years.
“It’s a disaster," Muatasim says. "Our family is swinging between having hope and losing hope."
