After 18 months of mourning, a Gaza son is found alive in an Israeli prison

After searching morgues and opening a mourning tent, a Palestinian family receives a phone call confirming their son is being held in Ofer Prison.For 18 months, the family of Eid Nael Abu Shaar, a Palestinian man from Gaza, believed this eldest son was dead.They had scoured Gaza for his body, obtained a death certificate and erected a tent to mourn his loss, but then an unexpected phone call from a lawyer confirmed he was alive and being held in Israel’s Ofer Prison.It ended an agonising year-and-a-half search for Eid, but the revelation highlights the devastating plight of thousands of other families in the Gaza Strip who still await news about their missing relatives.Their fates remain unclear with families not knowing if their loved ones lie under rubble, are buried in unidentified mass graves or are being held in Israeli detention centres, such as Ofer, where torture is commonplace and Palestinians face indefinite internment.A desperate search among the deadEid went missing on December 15, 2024, while looking for work to support his family close to central Gaza’s Netzarim Corridor, also known as the “Axis of Death”. Israel carved out and occupied this strip of land that separated northern Gaza from the south and became a place where hundreds of Palestinians, including children, were killed or went missing.His father, Nael Abu Shaar, said the search for Eid pushed the family to the brink of despair.“I slept at the doors of the morgues and hospitals,” he told Al Jazeera. “Whenever they announced an unidentified body or a martyr, I would run day and night. I searched Al-Aqsa, al-Awda and Nuseirat hospitals. I would open the morgue refrigerators with my own hands, looking for any trace of him or his clothes but found nothing.”