Tahrir Abou Madi writes on the walls of her burned and half-destroyed house: slogans that give her courage, words that express her pain and her hope. In her notebooks, she draws anything that might help her endure the wait that has eaten away at her for nearly two years. “This is my cry, the outpouring of my suffering,” confided the 40-year-old mother via video call. For the past 28 months, Israel has barred foreign media from entering the Gaza Strip.

Like thousands of Gazans searching for answers about the fate of their missing loved ones, the Abou Madi family does not know what happened to two of their children, Malak and Youssef.

On the morning of February 23, 2024, during an Israeli incursion into the city of Khan Yunis – which was carried out in retaliation for the massacres perpetrated by Hamas on October 7, 2023 – and after the family had been forced to evacuate a month earlier to the coastal area of Al-Mawassi, Malak and Youssef, aged 20 and 18, decided to return to the family home to collect books and supplies. “Malak was studying to become a nurse, and Youssef was supposed to take his tawjihi [the Palestinian high school diploma]. They wanted to keep studying. Malak was volunteering at Nasser Hospital and also wanted to retrieve her white coat.” That day, also present in the house were Malak and Youssef’s uncle, his wife and their two daughters, who had still not found anywhere to take refuge.

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