GAZA, (PIC)
Since the beginning of the Israeli genocide on Gaza, pulling bodies from under the rubble and burying them with medical documentation have been almost impossible tasks.
Therefore, human rights activists have launched the Palestinian Center for Missing and Forcibly Disappeared Persons to investigate their fate and whereabouts.
Ghazi Al-Majdalawi, the lead researcher of the center, affirmed that launching this human rights organization aims at building a database platform by allowing people to enter the data of their missing family members.
“Accurate documentation of the Israeli occupation’s violations is the cornerstone of its legal prosecution,” Majdalawi told the PIC, adding that the aim of the center is to prevent the erasure of the Israeli crimes by statute of limitations or political manipulation.
Majdalawi said that many crimes committed by the Israeli occupation were not prosecuted due to the lack of accurate and comprehensive documentation, affirming that such a documentation constitutes the basis of human rights reports submitted to the United Nations, the European Parliament, and international organizations.
Despite the importance of launching the Center, the activists face serious issues, topped by the grave humanitarian conditions that limit access to families of the missing.
Moreover, banning the entry of the necessary equipment into the Gaza Strip makes it difficult to lift the rubble, give martyrs proper burial, or even recognize their identities.
Furthermore, the lack of accredited DNA testing laboratories in Gaza poses a great challenge to confirming the identities of the missing.
The Center further seeks to hold partnerships with international human rights organizations to ensure that the issue of missing persons is taken to international judicial forums, according to Al-Majdalawi.
He stressed the importance of collaborative work to stop the Israeli occupation from enjoying impunity for its crimes, pointing out that the issue of missing and forcibly disappeared persons falls within the genocide file, which is currently being considered by the International Court of Justice.
The Center focuses on documenting the data of those who went missing in the current Israeli aggression in the first place. Later, the documentation process will include the victims of previous aggressions.
Entwined efforts of specialized human rights activists and journalists will be made to investigate the fate of the missing in addition to documenting their families’ suffering through field reports.
The launch of the center constitutes a glimmer of hope for the Palestinian people who have been fed up with promises to achieve justice and amplify their voices in international forums.
Gaza’s Government Media Office has recently documented that 14,000 Palestinians have faced enforced disappearance since the 7th of October 2023.
