An Investigative Analysis by Al Jazeera, the Gaza Civil Defence, and an International Consortium of Forensic Experts, Medical Practitioners, Legal Scholars, and Human Rights Investigators.

The Archive Of Ash:

In the rubble of Gaza, a new archive is being assembled. It does not consist of photographs, identity cards, or dental records. It consists of blood spray patterns on shattered walls, fragments of scalp adhered to twisted rebar, and the testimony of mothers who stepped on the liquefied remains of their children without knowing it.

This is the archive of the evaporated.

Since October 2023, Gaza’s Civil Defence has documented 2,842 Palestinians who left no recoverable bodies. They are not missing in the conventional sense, abducted, displaced, or buried beneath rubble awaiting excavation. They have been thermodynamically transformed. Their organic matter, composed of approximately 80% water, was subjected to temperatures exceeding 3,500 degrees Celsius, causing instantaneous vaporisation of soft tissue and fragmentation of bone.

The Al Jazeera Arabic investigation, The Rest of the Story, has provided the most comprehensive accounting of this phenomenon to date. But the publication of its findings in February 2026 is not the end of an investigation. It is the beginning of a much deeper interrogation, one that exposes not only the munitions and the military doctrine that deployed them, but the entire architecture of international complicity that has rendered this erasure permissible, deniable, and endlessly repeatable.

This analysis moves beyond documentation and into critique. It draws upon the testimony of medics who have abandoned the language of medicine, legal experts who have abandoned the language of justice, and international institutions that have been reduced to issuing statements while the machinery of annihilation continues to operate. It asks not only how 2,842 Palestinians were evaporated, but how the world came to accept evaporation as a legitimate category of death.

THE VANISHED: A New Category of Death.

In the smoking rubble of what was once the al-Tabin school in Gaza City, Yasmin Mahani stepped over the mangled remains of concrete and rebar. She was looking for her son, Saad. She found her husband screaming. She found her own feet sticking to the floor with blood. But of Saad, there was no trace.

“I went into the mosque and found myself stepping on flesh and blood,” Mahani told Al Jazeera Arabic. She spent days searching hospitals, morgues, and makeshift clinics. “We found nothing of Saad. Not even a body to bury. That was the hardest part.”

Mahani is not alone. She is one of thousands of Palestinian mothers, fathers, and children for whom the grief of death has been compounded by the horror of erasure.

According to an investigation by the Al Jazeera Arabic programme The Rest of the Story, Civil Defence teams in Gaza have documented at least 2,842 Palestinians who have been classified as “evaporated” since Israel launched its genocidal war on the Gaza Strip in October 2023. These are not estimates or extrapolations. They are the result of a grim forensic accounting process conducted under fire, in the ruins of obliterated neighbourhoods.

‘We Are Not Estimators’: The Methodology Of The Impossible.

Mahmoud Basal, spokesperson for Gaza’s Civil Defence, is a man who has been forced to invent a profession from the ruins of his society. There is no manual for recovering victims of thermobaric weapons in densely populated urban environments. There is no established protocol for classifying a human being as “evaporated.”

Yet Basal and his teams have developed one.

“The figure of 2,842 is not an estimate,” Basal has repeatedly stressed. “We do not guess. We do not extrapolate.”

The methodology is as follows: When a family reports that five people were inside a home before a strike, and rescue teams recover three intact bodies, they do not immediately classify the remaining two as evaporated. They conduct an exhaustive search of the rubble. They visit hospitals. They check morgues. They interview neighbours and extended family. Only when every conventional avenue of investigation has been exhausted, and only when biological traces such as blood spray, scalp fragments, or patches of skin are discovered at the impact site, do they record a case of evaporation.

“We enter a targeted home and cross-reference the known number of occupants with the bodies recovered,” Basal explained. “If a family tells us there were five people inside, and we only recover three intact bodies, we treat the remaining two as ‘evaporated’, but only after an exhaustive search yields nothing but biological traces: blood spray on walls, small fragments like scalps, or ash.”

The classification is one of last resort. It is applied only after the rubble has been sifted, hospitals checked, and morgues scoured. In many cases, the only evidence that a human being ever existed in that space is a dark spray pattern on a shattered wall, the physical signature of a body turned to vapour by temperatures hotter than the surface of the sun.

This is forensic accounting conducted under conditions of active warfare, with severe shortages of heavy equipment, fuel, and personnel. It is, by any objective measure, a conservative methodology.

And yet the international community has largely received this data in silence.

THE WEAPONS: Chemistry Of Annihilation.

The investigation identified a specific arsenal of US-manufactured munitions responsible for these disappearances. These are not conventional bombs. They are enhanced blast weapons designed to obliterate, not merely kill.

The Metallurgy Of Erasure:

The MK-84 “Hammer”: A 900kg (2,000lb) unguided bomb packed with tritonal, a mixture of 80% TNT and 20% aluminium powder. When detonated, the aluminium particles prolong the combustion wave, generating temperatures reaching 3,500 degrees Celsius (6,332 degrees Fahrenheit). This is hot enough to melt steel, vaporise concrete, and cause human bodies, composed of roughly 80% water, to flash into steam and ash almost instantaneously.

The BLU-109 Bunker Buster: Used in an attack on al-Mawasi in September 2024, an area Israel had itself declared a “safe zone” for forcibly displaced civilians. The bomb features a hardened steel casing and a delayed fuse, allowing it to bury itself deep within a structure before detonating a PBXN-109 explosive mix inside enclosed spaces. It creates a contained fireball that incinerates everything within reach. Twenty-two people evaporated in that single strike.

The GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb: A precision-guided glide bomb used in the attack on al-Tabin school. Russian military expert Vasily Fatigarov, interviewed for the investigation, explained its macabre efficiency. “The GBU-39 is designed to keep the building structure relatively intact while destroying everything inside. It kills via a pressure wave that ruptures lungs and a thermal wave that incinerates soft tissue.” Basal confirmed that Civil Defence teams recovered fragments of GBU-39 wings at sites where no bodies could be found.

Thermobaric weapons, often called “vacuum bombs” or “aerosol bombs,” operate on a two-stage principle. A primary charge disperses a fine cloud of metallic fuel, often aluminium, magnesium, or titanium particles. A secondary charge ignites this cloud, which combines with atmospheric oxygen to create a sustained, high-temperature explosion and a prolonged overpressure wave. Unlike conventional explosives, which deliver a sharp shock, thermobarics suffocate, crush, and cook simultaneously.

“To prolong the burning time, powders of aluminium, magnesium and titanium are added to the chemical mixture,” Fatigarov said. “This raises the temperature of the explosion to between 2,500 and 3,000 degrees Celsius [4,532F to 5,432F].”

The MK-84, packed with tritonal, an 80/20 mixture of TNT and aluminium powder, generates temperatures up to 3,500 degrees Celsius. At this temperature, aluminium becomes a secondary explosive, reacting with oxygen to sustain the blast wave long after conventional explosives would have dissipated.

This is not indiscriminate weaponry in the sense of being imprecise. The GBU-39, in particular, is a precision-guided munition. Its accuracy is measured in metres. The investigation found that it is “designed to keep the building structure relatively intact while destroying everything inside.”

Fatigarov’s description is clinical: “It kills via a pressure wave that ruptures lungs and a thermal wave that incinerates soft tissue.”

The combination is deliberately lethal. The pressure wave causes internal haemorrhaging and organ failure. The thermal wave, sustained by metallic additives, reduces organic matter to ash. There is no survivable space within the weapon’s effective radius. There are no recoverable remains.

The ‘Safe Zone’ Doctrine:

The September 2024 attack on al-Mawasi, which employed the BLU-109 bunker buster and evaporated 22 people, is particularly significant.

Al-Mawasi was not a military target by any conventional definition. It was an area Israel had itself designated a “safe zone” for forcibly displaced Palestinians. Thousands of civilians had relocated there in compliance with Israeli evacuation orders.

The use of a 900kg bunker buster, a weapon designed to penetrate reinforced concrete and destroy hardened command centres, against tents and makeshift shelters in a declared humanitarian area demands explanation. Israel has not provided one.

The BLU-109 features a delayed fuse and steel casing, allowing it to bury itself before detonating a PBXN-109 explosive mix inside enclosed spaces. This creates a contained fireball that maximises thermal effects within a confined volume. In al-Mawasi, the “enclosed space” was not a bunker or command post. It was the space within which displaced families had pitched their tents.

Basal confirmed that 22 people were evaporated in this single strike. Twenty-two families received no bodies. Twenty-two sets of remains were reduced to blood spray and ash.

The Medical Testimony: The Language Of Medicine Abandoned.

Dr. Munir al-Bursh, Director General of the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, has, over the course of this war, become an unlikely chronicler of atrocity. As Director General of Gaza’s Health Ministry, his responsibility is to maintain the territory’s healthcare system. Instead, he has found himself documenting the thermodynamics of human incineration.

His testimony is notable for its complete absence of emotional language. He does not speak of horror, tragedy, or suffering. He speaks of boiling points, oxidation, and tissue vaporisation.

“The boiling point of water is 100 degrees Celsius,” al-Bursh stated. “When a body is exposed to energy exceeding 3,000 degrees combined with massive pressure and oxidation, the fluids boil instantly. The tissues vaporise and turn to ash. It is chemically inevitable.”

The repetition of “chemically inevitable” across multiple interviews suggests deliberate emphasis. Al-Bursh is not merely describing an effect; he is assigning causality. The evaporation of Palestinian bodies is not an accident of warfare or an unpredictable consequence of explosive force. It is the predictable, designed outcome of specific weapon systems with known specifications and documented effects.

Al-Bursh, a physician trained to preserve life, has been forced to become an expert in its systematic erasure.

THE FORENSIC VOID: What It Means To Investigate Without Bodies.

The ICRC and the Problem of Incomplete Remains.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), traditionally the guardian of humanitarian law in armed conflict, has found itself reduced to a logistical actor in Gaza’s forensic catastrophe.

On February 5, 2026, ICRC spokesperson Amani Al Naouq confirmed that thousands of Palestinians remain listed as missing, and that families continue to search for information about the fate of their relatives. The ICRC has facilitated the transfer of bodies and remains released by Israel, providing specialised cooling containers and vehicles equipped with preservation systems.

But the nature of these remains defies conventional forensic practice.

The Ministry of Health in Gaza recently received 54 bodies and 66 boxes containing incomplete remains. The distinction is crucial. A body is recognisable. It possesses features, fingerprints, and dental records. A box of incomplete remains is an archaeological problem. It requires DNA analysis, often conducted without reference samples, because entire families have been evaporated, and no genetic material exists for comparison.

Al Naouq acknowledged that forensic authorities in Gaza face “challenges due to limited resources and capabilities.” This is a significant understatement. The Gaza Forensic Medicine Department operates without adequate electricity, without a consistent supply of reagents for DNA testing, and without the heavy excavation equipment needed to safely recover remains from collapsed multi-storey buildings.

Earlier official reports from the Forensic Medicine Department indicated that even when bodies are recovered, many show signs of “torture, burning, execution, bound hands, and blindfolded eyes.” Their features were often “unrecognisable due to severe torture, preventing families from identifying most of them, with some buried in mass graves.”

The ICRC, an institution founded to ensure humane treatment in war, has been reduced to transporting boxes of indeterminate human remains across a border while 766 bodies of Palestinian martyrs remain held by Israeli authorities.

Citizen Forensics: Omar Hamad And The Visual Signature.

On July 13, 2025, Gaza pharmacist Omar Hamad posted a video on X purporting to show a thermobaric bomb detonating in Beit Hanoun.

“Israel is using thermobaric (vacuum) bombs in Beit Hanoun,” Hamad wrote. “These are shock waves that spread in a circular and low pattern near the ground surface, preceding the appearance of the dust cloud by far, indicating a speed faster than the speed of sound.”

Hamad is not a military expert. He is not a forensic analyst. He is a civilian with a smartphone who, through repeated exposure to a specific phenomenon, has developed the ability to identify it from visual signatures alone.

His post received limited attention at the time. It has since been retrospectively validated by the Al Jazeera investigation. Hamad was not speculating. He was documenting.

The fact that civilian witnesses were able to identify Israel’s use of thermobaric weapons through publicly observable blast signatures, more than six months before a major international investigation confirmed it, raises troubling questions about the adequacy of official monitoring mechanisms.

Where were the UN investigators? Where were the human rights organisations? Where were the weapons experts employed by Western governments who continue to certify that Israel’s use of US-supplied munitions complies with international law?

They were, it appears, waiting for Al Jazeera.

‘A GLOBAL GENOCIDE’: Legal Complicity And The Supply Chain.

‘Internationally Prohibited’ but Universally Supplied.

A critical ambiguity has emerged in the discourse surrounding these weapons. The Al Jazeera investigation repeatedly describes thermal and thermobaric weapons as “internationally prohibited.” This requires qualification.

Thermobaric weapons are not prohibited by a specific, universal treaty analogous to the Chemical Weapons Convention or the Ottawa Treaty banning anti-personnel landmines. However, their use in populated areas is widely considered to violate multiple provisions of international humanitarian law, including the prohibitions on indiscriminate attacks, disproportionate force, and means of warfare that cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has classified thermobaric munitions as having “indiscriminate effects” when employed in concentrations of civilians. The Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) regulates incendiary weapons under Protocol III, which prohibits making the civilian population, as such, individual civilians, or civilian objects, the object of attack by incendiary weapons. While thermobarics are not strictly classified as incendiaries under the protocol, their thermal effects are substantially similar.

Lawyer Diana Buttu, a lecturer at Georgetown University in Qatar, has articulated the legal argument with unusual clarity. The issue, she contends, is not whether thermobarics appear on a specific prohibited list. The issue is whether weapons that cannot distinguish between combatants and non-combatants can lawfully be used in densely populated urban environments.

“This is a global genocide, not just an Israeli one,” Buttu said, speaking at the Al Jazeera Forum in Doha. “We see a continuous flow of these weapons from the United States and Europe. They know these weapons do not distinguish between a fighter and a child, yet they continue to send them. The question is why they are allowed to remain outside the system of accountability.”

Buttu’s framing shifts the analytic burden from the user to the supplier. This is not an argument about inadvertent complicity. It is an argument about knowing participation.

“The world knows Israel possesses and uses these prohibited weapons,” Buttu said. “The question is why they are allowed to remain outside the system of accountability.”

The $3.8 Billion Question:

The United States provides Israel with $3.8 billion in annual military assistance under a memorandum of understanding that extends through 2028. This is not humanitarian aid. It is not economic development assistance. It is a direct transfer of weapon systems, spare parts, and munitions to a foreign military.

The MK-84 bombs documented in the Al Jazeera investigation are American-made. The BLU-109 bunker busters are American-made. The GBU-39 precision glide bombs are American-made. The F-16 and F-35 aircraft that deliver them are American-made.

The United States could terminate these transfers at any time. It has chosen not to.

On January 31, 2026, the United States approved a new $3.8 billion weapons sale to Israel, including 30 AH-64E Apache attack helicopters and related equipment. The State Department issued a standard statement: “The United States is committed to the security of Israel, and it is vital to US national interests to assist Israel to develop and maintain a strong and ready self-defence capability.”

The deal was announced while a fragile ceasefire, brokered in October 2025, was theoretically in effect. It passed with little debate.

The Biden administration continued weapons shipments throughout 2023 and 2024. The Trump administration, inaugurated in January 2025, has expanded them. The $6.5 billion package approved in February 2026 represents a significant escalation in both value and capability, including attack helicopters and armoured vehicles designed for sustained ground operations.

This is not a failure of oversight or a bureaucratic accident. It is deliberate, sustained, and bipartisan policy.

European Complicity:

While the United States is the primary supplier, European states have also contributed to Israel’s military capabilities. Germany has approved hundreds of millions of euros in arms exports since October 2023, including tank components and advanced communications systems. The United Kingdom maintains a robust arms export licensing regime for Israel. Italy, France, and Spain have continued to supply weapons components and spare parts.

Buttu’s formulation, “We see a continuous flow of these weapons from the United States and Europe”, accurately describes the supply chain.

European governments have, in some cases, acknowledged concerns about Israel’s compliance with international law. Several have suspended arms export licenses, only to quietly reinstate them. Others have issued public statements urging restraint while privately approving shipments.

The gap between European rhetoric and European action is now so wide as to constitute a form of deception.

‘Not One More Bomb’: Congressional Dissent.

On February 7, 2026, US Congresswoman Delia Ramirez issued a direct challenge to this arrangement.

“There is no ceasefire in Gaza,” Ramirez wrote on X. “US-supplied bombs are still being used to murder Palestinians.”

Ramirez called on her colleagues to exercise congressional authority regarding foreign military aid and to support her proposed Block The Bombs Act, which would prohibit the use of MK-series bombs and “end our complicity in these horrors.”

“Not one more bomb, not one more dollar, not one more excuse,” she demanded.

The legislation faces near-insurmountable odds. Days before Ramirez’s statement, the State Department had approved a new $6.5 billion weapons package, including $3.8 billion for AH-64E Apache attack helicopters, $1.98 billion for Joint Light Tactical Vehicles, and $740 million for Namer Armoured Personnel Carrier power packs.

The Defence Security Cooperation Agency’s justification is revealing: “The proposed sale will improve Israel’s capability to meet current and future threats by enhancing the mobility of its ground forces during operations.”

The operations in question have killed more than 100,000 people, evaporated 2,842, and reduced 90 percent of Gaza’s infrastructure to rubble or uninhabitable structures.

CEASEFIRE IN NAME ONLY: The Killing Continues.

The word “ceasefire” has become a grim abstraction in Gaza.

According to a February 10, 2026, report from the Gaza Government Media Office, Israel has violated the terms of the ceasefire agreement 1,620 times since it was signed in October 2025. These violations include 560 shooting incidents, 79 military incursions into residential areas, 749 shelling and airstrikes, and 232 incidents of home demolitions.

The human toll of these “violations” is staggering: 573 Palestinians killed and 1,553 wounded in just four months. The Media Office stated that 99% of the dead were civilians, including 292 children, women, and elderly individuals.

These are not residual skirmishes or isolated incidents. They represent a systematic undermining of the agreement. The same government that signed the ceasefire has continued to bomb, shoot, and bulldoze. The “ceasefire” has become a diplomatic fiction that allows for the continuation of military operations under a veneer of restraint.

Dr. Munir al-Bursh noted that among the dead since October are numerous cases of “evaporation” that have yet to be fully investigated, as Civil Defence teams lack the heavy equipment needed to sift through rubble for biological traces, equipment whose entry into Gaza has been blocked under the terms Israel itself agreed to.

The ceasefire was supposed to allow 600 aid trucks into Gaza daily, including 50 fuel trucks. According to the Media Office, only 43% of aid trucks and 14% of fuel trucks have been permitted to enter. The Rafah crossing, which was to be reopened, has operated at approximately 25% capacity.

“The enemy has failed to comply with the agreed-upon number of trucks, the withdrawal lines, or the entry of materials needed for infrastructure maintenance and heavy equipment for civil defence to remove rubble and recover the bodies of martyrs,” the Media Office stated.

The ICRC continues to facilitate the transfer of bodies. The UN continues to issue statements. The US continues to approve weapons sales. The ceasefire, in practice, permits the Israeli military to continue operations while absolving the international community of the obligation to treat the situation as active warfare.

It is, perhaps, the most successful deception of the entire conflict.

THE FAILURE OF INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE:

As the bodies vaporise and the rubble piles mount, the international legal system has proven incapable of responding.

The ICC and the Politics of Jurisdiction

In November 2024, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant on charges including “starvation of civilians,” “extermination,” and “intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population.”

More than fifteen months later, neither individual has been apprehended. Israel has not complied with the warrants. States parties to the Rome Statute have not taken meaningful action to enforce them.

In February 2026, Israel formally challenged the ICC’s jurisdiction and the legality of the prosecutor’s request, arguing that the court had denied Israel the right to investigate itself.

More disturbingly, it has now been revealed that senior Western officials actively worked to obstruct the ICC investigation. On January 22, 2026, the UK government officially admitted that former Foreign Secretary David Cameron personally contacted ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan in April 2024 to dissuade him from pursuing charges against Israel.

Cameron reportedly warned Khan that pursuing Israel was “fundamentally different” from pursuing Russia, and raised the possibility of Britain cutting ICC funding or withdrawing from the Rome Statute entirely.

Sam Raphael, a professor at the University of Westminster who pursued the Freedom of Information request that forced the admission, said the confirmation supports “long-held suspicions that senior British officials attempted to sway the court at a crucial juncture.” He warned that such moves “erode the foundations of a rules-based international order” and undermine efforts to hold war criminals accountable.

International law professor Tariq Shandab was blunt: “The international justice system has failed the test of Gaza.”

Shandab’s critique extends beyond the ICC to the broader architecture of accountability.

“Since the ceasefire agreement [in October 2025], more than 600 Palestinians have been killed,” Shandab noted. “The blockade on medicine and food is itself a crime against humanity.”

Shandab pointed to the structural impediments to justice: the US veto power at the UN Security Council, which has shielded Israel from binding resolutions; the absence of political will in European capitals to pursue universal jurisdiction cases; and the willingness of Western states to characterise Israel’s actions as self-defence regardless of the evidence.

“Universal jurisdiction courts in countries like Germany and France could offer an alternative path to justice,” Shandab said. “Provided there is political will.”

The proviso is decisive. The political will does not exist.

The UN: Condemnation Without Consequence.

On February 6, 2026, eleven UN human rights experts issued a joint statement declaring that “Israel has openly defied international law and violated all human rights laws time and again, inflicting maximum suffering on civilians in the occupied Palestinian territory and beyond.”

The experts, including Francesca Albanese, Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, listed specific crimes: “murder, torture, sexual violence, and repeated forced displacement amounting to forcible transfer.” They cited “indiscriminate attacks on civilians and civilian objects,” “the use of starvation as a weapon of war,” and “collective punishment.”

Their conclusion was stark: “Acts aimed at their destruction in whole or in part are genocidal.”

The statement also addressed the impunity that has enabled this destruction. “Israel continues to face no real consequences, largely due to protection offered by its allies,” the experts said. “Israel’s continued impunity sends a dangerous message… Israel and its leaders must be held accountable.”

Francesca Albanese, in a separate intervention, has repeatedly warned that Israel’s actions amount to the “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians from Gaza. Her statements, meticulously documented and legally grounded, have been met with silence from Western capitals.

The Unfunded Mandate:

The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory possesses one of the most comprehensive mandates of any UN human rights mechanism. It is authorised to investigate violations by all parties, to document crimes, and to identify perpetrators for potential prosecution.

It lacks the resources to fulfil this mandate.

Commission Chair Srinivasan Muralidhar acknowledged in January 2026 that funding shortfalls have prevented investigators from examining arms shipments and settler violence, two issues explicitly within the commission’s scope.

The implications are profound. The commission cannot investigate the supply chain that delivered MK-84 bombs to Israeli airbases. It cannot document the role of US and European manufacturers in enabling the evaporation of Palestinian civilians. It cannot trace the financial flows, export licenses, and military assistance programmes that constitute the material infrastructure of Israel’s campaign.

The commission is not refusing to investigate. It is being prevented from investigating by the refusal of UN member states to provide adequate funding.

This is not a technical problem. It is a political choice.

The commission has also been hampered by Israeli non-cooperation and by the withdrawal of key personnel. Former chair Navi Pillay, who in September 2025 declared that Israel had committed genocide, retired in October 2025. Her departure, combined with the resignations of commissioners Chris Sidoti and Miloon Kothari, has deprived the inquiry of its most experienced voices.

Commission member Florence Mumba, commenting on the killing of three Palestinian journalists in central Gaza, offered an observation that might serve as the commission’s epitaph: “When a journalist is killed, it means there is something to hide.”

The journalists were killed. The weapons shipments remain uninspected. Something remains hidden and elusive.

THE WOUND THAT DOES NOT CLOSE: Grief Without Remains.

For the families, the legal debates and weapons specifications are abstract. The absence is concrete.

Rafiq Badran lost four children in an Israeli strike on the Bureij refugee camp. He searched for them for weeks. He dug through rubble with his bare hands. He visited every morgue in central Gaza. He found nothing.

“Four of my children just evaporated,” Badran said, his voice breaking. “I looked for them a million times. Not a piece was left. Where did they go?”

The question is not rhetorical. Badran is not asking for metaphysical consolation. He is asking for an accounting. He wants to know what happened to the bodies of his children. He wants to know why the international community, which professes commitment to human rights and humanitarian law, has provided the weapons that rendered his children unrecoverable.

His question remains unanswered.

Where do you bury a child who has become ash mixed with concrete dust? How do you mourn when there is no body to wash, no face to recognise, no grave to visit?

Palestinian culture places immense importance on the proper burial of the dead. Islamic burial rites require the washing of the body, the shrouding, the funeral prayer, and interment in a grave oriented toward Mecca. They provide structure to grief and community to mourning. They affirm that the deceased, though departed, remains a member of the community and is deserving of dignity.

When there is no body, there can be no washing. No shrouding. No grave. The deceased is not merely dead; they are erased. The community is denied the rituals that facilitate collective mourning. The family is denied closure.

Dr. al-Bursh described the psychological impact. “The families cannot achieve closure. They cannot perform the rituals of grief. Their loved ones have not only killed but also denied their existence in death. This is a cruelty that extends beyond the moment of killing. It perpetuates the trauma indefinitely.”

The Right To Burial:

International humanitarian law does not explicitly guarantee a right to burial. It does, however, require parties to conflict to take all feasible measures to search for and collect the dead, to prevent their despoliation, and to facilitate the return of remains to families upon request.

These obligations are found in the Geneva Conventions and customary international law. They are binding on all parties to the armed conflict. They are not optional.

Israel has recovered and continues to hold 766 bodies of Palestinians killed in Gaza. It has not returned them. It has not provided families with information about the location or condition of their relatives’ remains. It has not established a mechanism for the identification and repatriation of the dead.

This is not a secondary violation or a humanitarian afterthought. It is a continuation of violence beyond death. It denies families the opportunity to mourn, to achieve closure, and to fulfil their religious and cultural obligations to their deceased relatives.

For the 2,842 evaporated Palestinians, the question of repatriation is moot. There are no remains to return. But for the 766 whose bodies are held, and for the thousands more buried under rubble or in mass graves, the right to burial remains unfulfilled.

THE NUMBERS: An Underestimated Toll.

The official death toll in Gaza now exceeds 100,000 confirmed dead. A January 2025 study published in The Lancet estimated that the true toll had already been underestimated by 41% when accounting for uncounted bodies under rubble, indirect deaths from starvation and disease, and, critically, the “evaporated” who leave no recoverable remains.

The 2,842 documented cases of vaporisation are likely a floor, not a ceiling. Basal’s Civil Defence teams operate with acute shortages of fuel, heavy machinery, and personnel. Many strike sites remain inaccessible. Many families have been displaced multiple times, making witness testimony difficult to verify.

“We only record a case as ‘evaporated’ when we have absolute certainty,” Basal said. “We do not guess. We do not estimate. We document.”

Even so, the figure exceeds the entire civilian death toll of many recent conflicts.

THE RESPONSE: Silence And Deflection.

Washington’s Silence.

Following the Al Jazeera investigation, former US Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene broke ranks, posting on X: “If this is true and our country supplied the weapons, these are horrific war crimes. Crimes against humanity. And our country provided such weapons? When? Most Americans do not want to pay for this or be involved in such weapons.”

Her statement is the exception. Official Washington has largely ignored the findings. The Biden administration, and now the Trump administration, has continued to approve major arms packages. The State Department’s position remains that Israel has a right to self-defence and that the US will not dictate how its weapons are used.

The Board of Peace, established by President Donald Trump to oversee Gaza’s future, is currently in talks with UG Solutions, a North Carolina-based private security firm that previously operated aid distribution points in Gaza amid scenes of deadly violence. According to Reuters, the firm is recruiting Arabic-speaking contractors with combat experience and “proficiency with small arms weapons” for potential contracts in Gaza and Syria.

Amjad al-Shawa, head of the Palestinian NGOs Network, said the firm and its backers “have Palestinian blood on their hands; they are not welcome to return to Gaza.”

The ICRC’s Humanitarian Reduction:

The International Committee of the Red Cross, uniquely mandated under the Geneva Conventions to monitor compliance with international humanitarian law, has been reduced to a logistics contractor.

Its spokesperson in Gaza, Amani Al Naouq, confirmed that the organisation facilitates the transfer of bodies and remains, provides cooling containers, and coordinates with families. These are necessary and valuable functions. They are not, however, the functions for which the ICRC was awarded three Nobel Peace Prizes.

The ICRC possesses the authority to access detention facilities, to interview prisoners, to inspect military installations, and to report publicly on violations of the Geneva Conventions. It has not meaningfully exercised this authority in the context of Gaza.

Instead, it has adopted a posture of discreet humanitarianism, delivering supplies, transferring remains, and maintaining relationships with all parties. This posture has preserved the ICRC’s access. It has also rendered the organisation silent on the most consequential violations of international law occurring in the territory.

The 766 bodies of Palestinian martyrs held by Israeli authorities remain unrepatriated. The ICRC has not publicly demanded their release. The 2,842 evaporated Palestinians remain undocumented in any official ICRC registry. The organisation has not established a mechanism for investigating cases of disappearance through incineration.

The ICRC’s silence is not neutral. In the context of systematic violations, silence is complicity.

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ERASURE: How Weapons Become Policy.

The Problem of Proportionality.

International humanitarian law prohibits attacks that are “excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.” This is the principle of proportionality.

It has been rendered meaningless in Gaza.

Proportionality analysis requires an honest assessment of anticipated military advantage and anticipated civilian harm. When the weapon employed is a 900kg bunker buster in a declared safe zone, and the anticipated civilian harm includes the complete incineration of human bodies, the conclusion should be clear: such attacks are, by definition, disproportionate.

Yet no Israeli commander has been prosecuted for violating the proportionality principle. No US or European official has determined that Israel’s use of US-supplied munitions violates the terms of their transfer. No international tribunal has adjudicated a single case arising from the 2,842 evaporations.

The principle of proportionality has not been applied. It has been invoked as a shield, a legal formula that, in practice, provides cover for any attack as long as the attacker asserts, however implausibly, that it was directed at a legitimate military target.

The Impunity Doctrine:

The impunity is not accidental. It is the predictable outcome of a system designed to protect powerful states and their allies from accountability. The US veto at the Security Council, the chronic underfunding of UN human rights mechanisms, and the absence of political will to pursue universal jurisdiction cases, these are not bugs in the system. They are features.

Diana Buttu posed the question that remains unanswered: “The world knows Israel possesses and uses these prohibited weapons. The question is, why are they allowed to remain outside the system of accountability?”

The answer, increasingly clear, is that the system of accountability was never designed to hold Israel, or its allies, to account. It was designed to manage the appearance of accountability while permitting the substance of violations to continue.

TESTIMONY FROM THE VOID: What The Evaporated Left Behind.

Yasmin Mahani: The Mother Who Stepped on Her Son.

Yasmin Mahani’s testimony, recorded by Al Jazeera Arabic, has become the defining account of what evaporation means for those left behind.

“I went into the mosque and found myself stepping on flesh and blood,” she said.

She did not know, at that moment, that the flesh and blood beneath her feet was all that remained of her son, Saad. She searched hospitals and morgues for days, hoping to find him wounded, unconscious, or misidentified. She found nothing.

“We found nothing of Saad. Not even a body to bury. That was the hardest part.”

The phrase “hardest part” is, in this context, a profound understatement. Mahani’s testimony is not merely evidence of a crime. It is evidence of a specific form of cruelty, one that extends the moment of killing indefinitely, transforming death into an ongoing trauma without resolution.

Rafiq Badran: ‘Where Did They Go?’

Rafiq Badran’s question, “Where did they go?”, is the question that no international institution has answered. His children are not in the archives. They are not in the forensic reports. They are not in the mass graves or the morgues or the boxes of incomplete remains delivered by the ICRC.

They are in the void created by 3,500-degree temperatures, aluminium-enhanced tritonal, and precision-guided munitions designed to keep structures intact while destroying everything inside. They are in the gap between international law and its enforcement, between weapons sales and accountability, between the ceasefire that is not a ceasefire and the peace that is not peace.

They are, in the only sense that matters, nowhere.

The Doctors: Treating The Untreatable.

Dr. Mahmoud Abu Nujaila, a physician at the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza, was killed in an Israeli strike in November 2023. Before his death, he wrote on a whiteboard in the hospital’s emergency department:

“WHOEVER REMAINS UNTIL THE END WILL TELL THE STORY. WE DID WHAT WE COULD. REMEMBER US.”