Naming Gaza’s Dead: Doctors and Families Struggle as Israel Blocks DNA Tools

By Yasmin Abu Shammala

In Gaza, even death has become a battlefield.

Hundreds of bodies have been handed back by Israel in recent weeks, shrouded in plastic, numbered instead of named. Inside Gaza’s hospitals, doctors and families are fighting a quieter war: the struggle to bring back identity to those returned without one.

The scene inside Gaza’s hospitals tells a darker story, a story of doctors working with bare hands, of families searching for faces in the blur of death. What was once a place of healing has turned into a warehouse of loss, where the living fight to give names back to the dead. The air is heavy with the smell of decay and disinfectant, and the silence is broken only by the hum of failing generators and the soft sobs of families waiting for a sign. Every name recovered feels like a small act of victory, every unidentified body a wound that refuses to close.

“Ice Cream Freezers for the Killed”

“We’re keeping the bodies in ice cream freezers,” said Dr. Ahmad Duhahir, head of Gaza’s Forensic Medicine Committee, in a statement to Quds News Network (QNN).“The Red Cross provided them because we have no morgues, no refrigerated trucks, nothing. Our only tools are our hands and our faith.”

In Gaza, the dead share the same fate as the living, survival under impossible conditions. With power outages, bombed hospitals, and the collapse of every medical system, forensic teams now work in rooms never meant to hold the killed.

“We have one small room in Nasser Medical Complex,” Dr. Duhahir continued, “and another old, decaying building in Shifa Hospital. That’s all that remains of Gaza’s morgue network.”

Between the ruins of hospitals and the silence of powerless machines, Gaza’s forensic teams continue their grim task: documenting, recording, and preserving whatever traces they can before time and heat erase them. The work has become an act of endurance more than science, a struggle to maintain humanity amid collapse.

According to Zaher al-Wahidi, head of the Ministry of Health’s Information Unit, the teams are doing the impossible with almost nothing. “Bodies arrive in groups, sometimes dozens at a time,” he told QNN. “We document, photograph, and tag every one, but without proper equipment or labs, we rely on what little we have.”

Families are given five days to identify their loved ones, five days between recognition and disappearance. After that, the unnamed are buried, their graves marked by coded numbers and hand-drawn coordinates on scraps of paper, a fragile attempt at order in a place where even death has lost its peace.

The Numbers Tell a Story of Loss

According to al-Wahidi, the Strip has received 270 bodies from Israel, most of them still without names. Only 76 have been identified so far.

“The rest remain unknown,” al-Wahidi told QNN. “We’ve already buried more than 520 unidentified bodies.”

Every body is tagged, photographed, and cataloged, every ring, piece of fabric, and trace of identity documented like evidence from a crime scene.

In total, Gaza has received 270 bodies from Israel; only 76 have been identified. More than 520 remain buried without names.

But without DNA testing, refrigeration, or proper forensic equipment, Gaza’s doctors are left to work with fragments of memory rather than science.

Al-Wahidi described a harrowing process that blurs the line between the living and the killed. “Israel sent four shipments: two to Nasser Medical Complex and two to Abu Youssef al-Najjar Hospital, carrying more than 420 bodies,” he said. “We even discovered around 50 others in mass graves inside Shifa Hospital. We still don’t know if these were newly killed or returned after being exhumed. There are no answers … only questions.”

Several officials said that Israel possesses detailed records of some of the bodies returned, including names and dates of arrest, yet has refused to disclose them.

Health workers who examined the remains said that many of the bodies bore signs of torture, broken bones, and close-range gunshot wounds, suggesting that some of those individuals were taken alive and later executed in the field.

These were not just casualties of war, some of them were detainees. Israel knows who they are, and what was done to them.

The Battle for Identity: DNA Testing Denied

Dr. Ismail al-Thawabta, spokesperson for the Government Media Office, said the crisis is not just logistical, it is moral, and deeply human. “More than 120 unidentified bodies have been buried since the ceasefire,” he told QNN. “And these are only from the batches returned by Israel. Thousands more were buried during the war itself: nameless, in mass graves, erased from existence.”

Al-Thawabta said Israel continues to hold thousands of Palestinian remains in what are known as “cemeteries of numbers,” where bodies are buried under coded plaques instead of names.

“This is a violation of every principle of humanity,” he said. “Even in death, Palestinians are denied dignity. The Israeli occupation blocks the entry of DNA testing equipment and modern forensic machines into Gaza, and the world knows, yet stays silent.”

She Knew Him by What Was Missing

For Khitam Abu Gharqoud, recognition came not through a face or a DNA test, but through what was missing. Her brother, Adel, disappeared two years ago. When the Ministry of Health released photographs of the bodies returned by Israel, she scrolled through them in silence until her eyes froze on one image: a hand, bruised and pale, missing a finger that had been severed long before the war … That was how she knew.

There were no words, only a trembling certainty that pierced through the numbness of waiting. After years of searching and sleepless nights, her family had found him, yet what they saw was harder than the loss itself.

The bodies were stacked, five on top of each other, wrapped in plastic, stripped of dignity. The smell of decay filled the air.

“There was no space, no time, no goodbye,” she said quietly to QNN.

When she finally buried him, closure felt distant. “It wasn’t the farewell we dreamed of,” she said. “The body was fragile, breaking apart. We couldn’t even touch him. We just watched him disappear again, this time into the ground.”

Endless Mourning

In Gaza, doctors say they are not asking for miracles, only for the means to do their jobs. They are racing against time, heat, and decay, trying to preserve what remains before the bodies vanish beyond recognition.

“We need field refrigerators that can last more than a few days,” said al-Wahidi. “We need DNA testing labs, modern forensic tools, the basics to identify our people.”

According to the Ministry of Health, Israel continues to block the entry of such equipment, leaving Gaza’s forensic teams to work with what little they have. “Even after death, Palestinians deserve dignity,” said Dr. Ismail al-Thawabta. “All we ask for are the tools to bring their names back.”

In Gaza, even dignity needs permission to exist. In Gaza, grief has no end and no silence. The morgues smell of salt and metal. Outside, families wait under the burning sun, clutching photos and fragments of clothes, hoping for a sign, fearing recognition.

The officials who spoke to QNN said the world’s response has been “disappointing and shameful.”

Requests for forensic support were ignored. Appeals to international organizations were left unanswered. “This is Gaza’s reality,” said al-Thawabta. “Even the process of death is under siege.”

In Gaza today, numbers replace names. Freezers replace graves. And silence replaces justice. But those who remain: the doctors, the families, the witnesses, keep fighting for one thing the Israeli occupation could never take: the right to remember.

“We won’t let them erase us,” said Dr. Duhahir. “Not the living. Not the dead.”