we are not numbers
emerging writers from Palestine tell their stories and advocate for their human rights
Identifying the bodies of returned resistance fighters was deeply distressing for family members and loved ones.
Ali Jouda and his son Ihsan before the war. Photo: Rawan Wajdi Jouda
When my family and I learned that Israel had returned the bodies of over 300 resistance fighters as part of its October 2025 agreement, we wondered whether we would finally learn what happened to my cousin, Ali Jouda, and our neighbor, Saber Qadouha, both of whom had been missing since October 7, 2023.
The mangled, tortured and abused faces and bodies we saw will haunt us for the rest of our lives.
Ali was 32 when the war began. When he was in his 20s, his father died of cancer. In 2015 Ali joined the resistance. I’ll always remember him as a loving husband to his wife, Nidaa, and a devoted father to his two sons—Ihsan, 5, and Yazan, 4. He was the kind of man who would walk home in the pouring rain to save the cost of transportation just so he could buy small gifts for his sons.
At 5 a.m. on October 7, 2023, Ali was returning from his night shift as a security guard at a local café when he called his mother to let her know he had received an urgent call. He asked her to care for his family. It was the last time any of us heard from him.
Saber was 27 years old on October 7. His warm personality and quick humor made him beloved by everyone in his Nuseirat refugee camp community. One of his former colleagues told me that “Saber could make you laugh, even when your own heart was breaking.” Saber was deeply affected by the deaths of two of his uncles. One of them was killed in the First Intifada, before Saber was born; the other was killed in the 2008 war. In 2016, Saber joined the Nuseirat Battalion; he was selected for its Elite Forces in 2018. After he injured his leg during a training exercise in 2020, Saber was transferred to the Military Media Unit, where he used his journalism degree from Al-Aqsa University to document the resistance.
After receiving an urgent call in the early hours of October 7, Saber returned home briefly to collect his camera gear. When his mother asked him where he was going, he replied softly that it was “just a training night.” Later that morning, when missiles began to light up the sky and sirens wailed across Palestine, his family realized he was among the first fighters to cross into Israeli territory. Although his family never heard from him, his mother clung to hope, even after an Israeli airstrike killed her husband and four of their children.
To help family members identify the bodies of the returned resistance fighters, the Red Cross, in coordination with the Ministry of Health, set up a large tent on the grounds of Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis and began displaying photos of the bodies on a screen. There was no available space to display the photos inside the hospital, since it was overwhelmed with the wounded and the dead. Families were informed that they had 10 days to identify their loved ones or they would be buried in mass graves.
We began our search for Ali in that tent. There were always at least 60 people there at all times, and each hour brought new families hoping for answers. Reaching the hospital was not easy for us or anyone else since the road to it was long, dangerous, and costly for families traveling to Khan Younis from the north or central areas of Gaza.
Inside the tent, the atmosphere was heavy and heartbreaking. Families sat shoulder to shoulder, their eyes fixed on the screen, scanning photo after photo of burned, disfigured bodies, each one hoping to find, or not find, someone they loved. Some stared in silence, frozen with fear and uncertainty. Others broke down in quiet sobs or loud cries when they recognized a relative. The space felt suffocating, not just from the crowd, but from the unbearable weight of grief, anxiety, and helplessness that filled the air.
After we learned that the Red Cross had posted the photos online, we found the link and avoided additional trips to the hospital. We used a phone to browse the images, while we sat in a relative’s home whose windows had been shattered and walls cracked during the war. We had no electricity—only a power bank and a weak internet connection.
Saber Qadouha with his sister Maryam, who was also killed in an Israeli airstrike. Photo: Mohammed Qadohaa
The images we saw were horrifying. Many of the bodies had decomposed and showed signs of severe abuse. One image, forever etched in my mind, is of a corpse with its hands tightly bound. That moment broke something inside me. I couldn’t sleep for days after that. Seeing so much pain frozen in a still image is something no one can ever be prepared for.
We visited the link many times before coming across a photo of a body we thought might be Ali. The face was badly burned and disfigured, but other features made us think it could be him. We wrote down the number assigned to it.
The next day, Ali’s brother, Adam, went to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis to view the body. He was able to identify his brother through his personal belongings, including his belt and underclothes. For two years, we had held on to the hope that Ali might still be alive; we were devastated to learn that these were indeed his remains.
When we all went to look at his body, it was difficult to look at his face—it was so burned and disfigured. Adam noticed a wound on Ali’s side and that both of his legs were broken. We still do not know if those injuries were the cause of death or signs of torture. The way his legs were broken did not seem consistent with a single explosion or a natural fall; it raised painful questions that remain unanswered.
The task of trying to identify Saber fell to his only surviving brother, Mohammad. Mohammad made the difficult journey to Nasser Hospital several times, each visit driven by a fragile thread of hope. On his final visit, he came upon a body that looked painfully familiar. He silently studied its every feature as he searched desperately for any sign that might confirm it was not Saber and give him hope that his brother might still be alive somewhere. In the end, he was unable to identify the body.
Searching the bodies was deeply distressing for family members and loved ones. Many of the bodies were in advanced stages of decomposition. Others bore disturbing signs of mistreatment, such as bound hands and injuries to the head, chest, or limbs. Israeli authorities returned the bodies without medical documentation, autopsy reports, or information about the circumstances or dates of death. It fell on Palestinian doctors to try to determine what had happened. Because the Israeli blockade prevents Palestinian physicians from having access to forensic tools, such as DNA testing kits, they are unable to carry out proper examinations. Instead, they must rely on rudimentary methods like physical characteristics and personal belongings to identify the dead and determine how they died.
To date, at least 250 bodies have gone unidentified and have been buried in mass graves. Before they were buried, Palestinian physicians took a DNA sample from each, with the hope that one day it might help grieving families identify their loved ones.
While it is important to continue the struggle to identify all of the bodies, to determine whether any of them had been tortured, and to seek accountability for those responsible for war crimes, I will never be able to unsee the horror I witnessed.
This article is co-published with Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.
