Viral picture provides Gaza household a bittersweet glimpse of their lacking son

BEIRUT — It had been one yr, eight months and 27 days since Atallah al-Drimly mentioned goodbye to his son that Saturday morning in 2024, when Mahmoud insisted he might now not keep away from the house he had fled and began strolling north towards Gaza City. It was the final anybody noticed of him.

But on July 28 — after fruitless searches in hospital morgues and clinics; repeated entreaties to rights teams and the Red Cross; and the fixed searching via pictures of Gaza’s many unidentified lifeless — there was Mahmoud in an image that had gone viral on social media, detained in an unnamed web site with two Israeli troopers posing beside him.

In the image, Mahmoud sits on the ground flanked by the troopers, trying diminutive, youthful than his 22 years. Though the slender man within the image is certain and blindfolded, Al-Drimly insists he might nonetheless acknowledge his son.

“I used to be scrolling and the picture confirmed up on my Facebook. I knew it was Mahmoud, 100%,” Al-Drimly mentioned in a telephone interview.

The image shocked Al-Drimly, triggering feelings he was nonetheless parsing.

“I felt unhappiness, happiness, it was all jumbled. Words aren’t sufficient to explain how I felt,” he mentioned.

Still, Al-Drimly might depend himself fortunate; he no less than had acquired some phrase of his son.

Of the hundreds who like Mahmoud went lacking in the course of the Hamas-Israel struggle, the crushing majority stay unaccounted for, disappeared within the death-stalked bedlam of Gaza, no trace as to whether or not they’re lifeless or alive. For their family members, it’s a ache that appears suspended in time, like a damaged clock.

Mahmoud’s case, in any other case unremarkable had it not acquired social media traction, is likely one of the extra hidden penalties of Israel’s marketing campaign on Gaza, which has killed some 73,658 folks — most of them civilians — and wounded greater than twice that quantity, in response to well being authorities within the enclave. That consists of the greater than 1,350 folks killed by Israeli hearth since a nationwide ceasefire was signed in October.

Although the Health Ministry in Gaza doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants, its figures are thought-about correct, together with by the Israeli army.

Mahmoud isn’t any fighter, his mother and father mentioned. Before the struggle he labored as a blacksmith, they mentioned, and neither he nor anybody else within the household has a political affiliation, whether or not to Hamas or some other militant teams.

Yet there have been no lack of how for civilians to be ensnared within the killing machine in Gaza since Israel began pummeling the region in October 2023, after operatives from the Palestinian militant group Hamas launched an assault on southern Israel, killing roughly 1,200 folks and kidnapping some 250 others.

Mahmoud might have been a sufferer of an airstrike that collapsed a constructing over him, just like the estimated 10,000 folks authorities in Gaza imagine are nonetheless buried under rubble.

He may be among the many 1,300 folks from Gaza detained in Israeli prisons underneath the designation of “illegal combatants” by Israeli authorities — a determine that doesn’t embrace these held by the Israeli army. Another risk: He could possibly be among the many corpses of 1,700 Palestinians — most of them from Gaza — being held by Israel, in response to Israeli media experiences.

The International Community for the Red Cross, the first overseas rights group concerned in monitoring down lacking individuals within the enclave, says it’s coping with roughly 5,000 to six,000 open tracing requests in Gaza. But its work in Gaza is curtailed, officers say.

One subject is Gaza authorities’ woefully diminished sources to look and retrieve our bodies from the rubble. With Israel barring the entry of earth-moving gear into the Gaza Strip, restoration operations for corpses have relied on naked palms and rudimentary instruments, or have to attend for the dear few occasions when the Red Cross is ready to usher in heavy equipment.

The Red Cross says it has skilled some 100 forensic practitioners in search, restoration and documentation, however with the enclave’s well being system and chilly storage services all however obliterated by Israeli assault, there aren’t any laboratories that may deal with forensic evaluation.

Another main roadblock is that after Oct. 7, 2023, Israeli authorities have barred the Red Cross from visiting Israeli detention facilities.

“It’s a black gap in our data,” mentioned Pat Griffiths, spokesperson for the Red Cross in Jerusalem. “If we have been capable of acquire entry to detention tomorrow, and forensic authorities had entry to the gear to train their full skill, you’d see a giant discount in caseload.”

Israeli authorities have additionally turn out to be much less cooperative with Palestinian prisoner associations, delaying responses to queries if they’re holding people, and slow-rolling notifications to households and prisoner commissions on those that died in Israeli custody, in response to Sahar Francis, a lawyer who was the chief director of Addameer, a Palestinian prisoner advocacy group that was lately banned by Israel. (The U.S. accuses Addameer of “supporting terrorism.”)

“If you don’t get a solution, you don’t know what to say to the households,” she mentioned. Even those that are instructed their family members will not be in Israeli custody usually don’t settle for the response.

That Mahmoud confirmed up in any respect was a fluke.

The household had fled their house in Gaza City quickly after the struggle started, crammed right into a tent within the enclave’s south. But a yr into their displacement, Mahmoud couldn’t take being away from his house any longer.

“He stored saying he wished to return, that he couldn’t do something the place he was. And then at some point he did it,” Al-Drimly mentioned.

After he disappeared on Nov. 2, 2024, his household approached any prisoner rights teams it might discover, submitting hint requests with the Red Cross and different organizations. Any time Al-Drimly heard of assaults in close by Khan Yunis or Deir al Balah, he would go to examine. He talked to prisoners and detainees who have been launched, determined to get any phrase of Mahmoud.

“We bought nothing, neither excellent news or unhealthy information,” Al-Drimly mentioned.

That modified on July 28, when Nikol Stelmashvski, an Israeli who lately completed her obligatory army service, posted a 20-photo carousel on her Instagram account, together with the picture of herself smiling alongside Mahmoud.

The pictures triggered a wave of condemnation, then unfold throughout many social media platforms. (After the picture went viral, Stelmashvski deleted the picture and made her account personal; she later appeared to have deleted her account totally.)

“Two years of listening to nothing, and out of the blue persons are swarming us and congratulating me and Mahmoud’s mom that our son remains to be alive,” Al-Drimly mentioned.

The opacity from Israeli jail authorities has been accompanied by a ramping-up of harsh therapy of Palestinian detainees, in response to launched prisoners, Palestinian and Israeli and overseas rights teams, and the U.N. (Israel has repeatedly denied allegations of torture and abuse and says the Israeli army acts in accordance with laws.)

Earlier this yr, an investigation by the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur on Torture tallied 52 instances of torture and an extra 33 instances of sexual torture and sexualized ill-treatment in Israeli detention facilities. The rapporteur accused Israel of “gross disregard” of its obligation to deal with all detainees humanely and with out discrimination. She additionally counted 94 deaths of Palestinians in Israeli custody; different Palestinian teams say the true determine is considerably increased.

“Since Oct. 7, there is no such thing as a mechanism for guaranteeing the well-being of Palestinian residents,” mentioned Issam Younes, head of Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, a Palestinian rights group.

“The key phrase right here is ‘accountability.’ We’ve lengthy mentioned that the dearth of that accountability for Israel would result in worse outcomes, and that is the place we at the moment are.”

For the Al-Drimly household, the spark of hope triggered by the picture hasn’t resulted in something concrete. Though the household renewed its inquiries on Mahmoud’s whereabouts, the solutions haven’t been encouraging: Both the Israeli Prison Service and the Israeli army denied he was of their custody.

“We’ve talked to everybody we are able to,” Al-Drimly mentioned, his voice weary.

“No one has helped us discover him.”