Gaza's Dead Are Being Buried Years Late — The Infrastructure of Grief Under Siege

Three years after Israel's assault began, Civil Defence teams are still pulling bodies from rubble. Over 8,000 remain trapped. The siege ensures recovery is manual, slow, and incomplete.

Mahmoud Nabhan waited more than three years to bury 17 members of his family, including seven children and grandchildren — among them a 45-day-old infant — killed when their home was struck 20 days into Israel's military campaign in October 2023. Civil Defence teams only recently retrieved their remains from the rubble of his home in Bir an-Naaja, northern Gaza. "It feels as if they have just been killed again," he said. "The wounds have reopened."

The scale of what remains underground is staggering. Palestinian Civil Defence estimates more than 8,000 bodies are still to be recovered across Gaza. The total number of missing Palestinians exceeds 10,000 — a figure that includes people believed buried under rubble, detained, or buried without identification. More than 630 bodies and human remains have been recovered from destroyed buildings since November 2025, according to Palestinian authorities cited by the United Nations. The genocide in Gaza has killed at least 73,600 people, with 82 percent of structures damaged and two-thirds destroyed. The October 2025 truce between Israel and Hamas — repeatedly broken by Israel — has allowed some recovery operations to proceed, but the operating environment remains brutal. Israel's ongoing siege means Civil Defence teams work with severely limited resources, often reduced to manual excavation as their only method. Fatima al-Masri, 47, waited two years to recover the remains of her husband and 18-year-old son, killed in an Israeli attack in the Safatwi area of northern Gaza in October 2024. She contacted Civil Defence repeatedly — every week, every two weeks, every month — but was told heavy machinery was needed to lift the collapsed floors. When workers finally dug through, they found bone fragments and her son's mobile phone. Ramiz Hassouna, a lecturer at Israa University, endured nearly two years of conflicting reports about his brother Montaser, who disappeared on November 8, 2024, during the Israeli military siege of Jabalia refugee camp. Some said he had been killed; others believed he had been detained. Civil Defence teams eventually recovered his remains from a destroyed building in al-Faluja. He was identified through personal belongings — a wristwatch, a miswak, a prayer booklet — and distinctive marks on his front teeth. Hassouna could not bring himself to look at his brother's remains and sent his younger brother instead. What emerges from these accounts is not just individual grief but a systemic condition. The destruction of 82 percent of Gaza's structures has created a landscape where the dead are physically inaccessible — entombed in concrete and steel that requires heavy machinery the siege prevents from entering. Recovery is not delayed by negligence but by the deliberate restriction of equipment, fuel, and access. The truce has not ended this dynamic; it has merely created narrow windows within it. The families' stories share a common architecture: an attack, a collapse, years of uncertainty, repeated attempts to reach Civil Defence, and finally a grim excavation that brings closure and fresh trauma simultaneously. Montaser Hassouna's friends were recovered together and buried in the same grave. "As they accompanied one another in this life, they will accompany one another in the afterlife," his brother said. The dead wait in the rubble. The living wait above it. The siege ensures both waits are long.