A Palestinian Authority team tasked with looking into the fate of more than 11,000 Palestinians missing and forcibly disappeared from Gaza commenced its work on Tuesday. The first meeting was chaired by Justice Minister Sharhabil al-Zaeem , in a step that officials described as addressing one of the most urgent humanitarian and national issues.
The PA is the West Bank -based government, which has only some control over the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.
In a statement carried by the official news agency WAFA , the justice ministry said the team represents a "unifying national step" to follow up on the issue of missing persons, amid a government commitment to uncover the fate of 11,200 Palestinians who went missing or were forcibly disappeared since the start of the Gaza war .
The justice ministry noted that the figure includes 4,700 women and children, in addition to "thousands of victims whose bodies remain under the rubble of destroyed buildings" in Gaza, as well as an unknown number of detainees held in Israeli prisons without formal acknowledgement of their detention.
Israel began its genocidal campaign in the Gaza Strip on 7 October 2023, killing more than 72,000 Palestinians in the two-year war, and hundreds more despite a US-brokered ceasefire since October last year.
A much larger number of people were wounded , and most of the enclave lies in ruins.
Israel continues to occupy over half of the coastal territory amid disagreements over the ceasefire’s implementation.
Gaza’s social development ministry had announced earlier this month that more than 8,100 Palestinians, including women and children, remain missing under the rubble and on the streets in the enclave. How will it operate? Al-Zaeem said the team would form the nucleus of a future national body dedicated to missing persons, stressing that determining their fate is "a fundamental human right that does not lapse with time and is guaranteed by international conventions".
He explained that the team’s work will follow a methodology beginning with the comprehensive documentation of cases, followed by technical and field stages. He noted that his ministry has launched an online platform to register data on missing persons, aimed at unifying efforts and improving the accuracy of information.
The team includes representatives from several ministries and official institutions, including the interior, foreign affairs, health, and social development ministries, as well as the Commission of Detainees' Affairs and the Central Bureau of Statistics, in addition to human rights and union bodies.
The team’s mandate includes coordinating efforts among the relevant authorities, developing a unified national database, and providing legal, psychological, and social support to the families of missing persons, as well as enhancing cooperation with relevant international organisations.
The team is scheduled to hold regular meetings and form specialised subcommittees covering documentation, forensic medicine, legal affairs, psychological and social support, international cooperation, and media.
Civil defence teams continue to operate in high-risk environments in Gaza due to Israeli restrictions on the entry of equipment and machinery needed to deal with the scale of destruction, according to Palestinian officials.