No indication

HaMoked set out the figures in an update dated Oct. 26, 2026. “Between October 2023 and October 2026, HaMoked submitted 5,991 individual requests for information about the whereabouts of Gaza residents,” it writes. “In 33.6% of these requests (2,015 out of 5,991), the response was ‘no indication’,” which HaMoked reads as “meaning that in approximately one-third of cases, no information was provided about where the Gaza residents were being held.”

Mondoweiss describes HaMoked as an Israeli human rights organization. HaMoked’s page does not say who gave the answer to these 5,991 requests. For the court petitions it filed, it names the Israeli military; they are set out below, under “Asking where.”

The New Humanitarian published her account on Feb. 26, 2026, in a report by Ansam Elkattaa, written in collaboration with Egab, on the families of Gaza’s missing. It describes Um Khaled al-Akhras as a 62-year-old from Rafah, in southern Gaza, who was forcibly displaced to Khan Younis.

By her account, she contacted several human rights institutions concerned with prisoners and the missing, and received the same response from all of them: her son was not being held by Israel. Released prisoners have told her otherwise. “We ask released prisoners, they tell us: ‘We saw him,’” she says.

Reports differ on her son’s age and on where he disappeared, so neither is given here.

HaMoked writes: “Between 2023 and 2026, HaMoked filed 114 habeas corpus petitions with the High Court of Justice (HCJ), demanding that the State disclose the whereabouts of those who had disappeared. Following 76 of these petitions, the military eventually located the person in its detention facilities, despite having previously reported ‘no indication’ of their detention. However, in 38 cases, the person whose whereabouts the State was asked to establish was not located.”

The 114 is HaMoked’s own count. In some cases, it says, it had received solid evidence that the person it was seeking had been arrested by Israeli forces in Gaza or had last been seen in an Israeli prison.

The answer is not new. In December 2024, the Associated Press reported on Palestinians who disappeared after encounters with Israeli troops in Gaza. In one case, AP wrote, “Hamoked was told by the military there was no indication of him in Israeli detention.” The Israeli military declined comment, AP reported.

Al Jazeera English told Malak Abu Mady’s story on March 31, 2026, in a report by Tareq Abu Azzoum. Gaza’s Ministry of Health issued a death certificate for her, the report says. Months later, recently released Palestinian detainees shared a list of prisoners held in Israeli custody.

“Among the names was Malak Abu Mady,” the report goes on. “Next to her name were three disturbing words: ‘No information available.’”

The Fourth Geneva Convention, relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, was signed in Geneva on Aug. 12, 1949. Article 106, “Internment card,” reads in full:

“As soon as he is interned, or at the latest not more than one week after his arrival in a place of internment, and likewise in cases of sickness or transfer to another place of internment or to a hospital, every internee shall be enabled to send direct to his family, on the one hand, and to the Central Agency provided for by Article 140, on the other, an internment card similar, if possible, to the model annexed to the present Convention, informing his relatives of his detention, address and state of health. The said cards shall be forwarded as rapidly as possible and may not be delayed in any way.”

The article sets a rule. It is not a finding about any case in this issue.

Al Jazeera English told the family’s story on July 23, 2026, in a report by Shadi Shamia and Ibrahim Al Khalili on Gaza’s missing. He is Hamada al-Banna here as Al Jazeera English names him: the first name is the one he uses in his own words to his father. Other outlets give him a different first name.

“After six months of searching, the lawyer informed the family that al-Banna had been killed,” the report says. In their grief, the family held a three-day wake. “After a year in Israeli captivity, al-Banna was finally released,” it says.

The report gives two timings for the wake: “nearly a year ago,” in its opening, and “about two months before his eventual release,” further on. This file says only that he was released months after it.

He told Al Jazeera English: “I said, ‘Dad, it’s Hamada.’ He replied, ‘Who is Hamada? My son was killed.’”

“This means that we are not able to confirm to families those who are detained, like we used to,” Pat Griffiths, spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Jerusalem, told Al Jazeera English in a report by Maram Humaid published Aug. 3, 2026.

From January to June 2026, the ICRC recorded “over 16,900 contacts with field officers by family members seeking information on loved ones.” The figure counts all family inquiries, not only those from detainees’ families. In the same report, the ICRC said its access to places of detention under Israeli authorities “remained suspended as of the end of June 2026,” and that it was engaging with Israeli authorities with the aim of “resuming detention activities including notifications of those detained and resumption of visits to meet detainees.”

Ajith Sunghay, who heads the UN Human Rights Office in Palestine, spoke to +972 Magazine for a report by Frances Brogan published July 15, 2026. In the same report, Avshalom Matalon, who researches enforced disappearances of Palestinians for HaMoked, said: “The system of detainee registration, and then the system of information dissemination, are both very, very messy and flawed.”

The State Attorney’s Office wrote in its preliminary response in HCJ 9021/23, dated Jan. 23, 2024, “that the military has no obligation to give HaMoked any information concerning Gaza Strip residents who were arrested in the course of the war, and that such consent was given in the past ex gratia.” The words are HaMoked’s English translation of the Hebrew filing; HaMoked was the petitioner.

On Feb. 18, 2024, Israel’s High Court dismissed that petition, “without expressing an opinion concerning the set of laws which applies in each one of the cases…”, in HaMoked’s English translation of the judgment.

Mondoweiss reported on Oct. 30, 2026, in a story by Mohamed Solaimane published in collaboration with Egab, that Manar was 22 when he left the family’s tent in Gaza’s al-Mawasi in November 2024 and never returned. His father, Mohammed, is 58.

Mohammed told Mondoweiss: “If he’s dead, I’ll pray for him and I want his remains. If he’s been detained, let them tell us.” He also said: “We don’t know if he’s dead or still alive.”

He contacted the International Committee of the Red Cross and described what his son was wearing on the day he disappeared, hoping for information about his whereabouts. “He hasn’t heard back since,” Mondoweiss wrote. Since Manar’s disappearance, Mohammed said, the family has looked at more than 70 bodies in the hope that one would be his.

Manar is missing. Mondoweiss does not report that he is detained, and this file does not say so.

On Oct. 25, 2026, the International Committee of the Red Cross told The Times of Israel that it had “recently received from the Israeli authorities a list of names of people held in Israeli detention facilities.” The paper says this referred to Palestinian detainees from the West Bank and Gaza, including those arrested during the war in the Strip. “Our teams are in contact with the detainees’ families and are updating them on the matter,” the Red Cross said. It did not give the number of names, or the date it received the list.

The Times of Israel reported that this was the first time since the war began in October 2023 that Israel had given the Red Cross complete information about Gazan detainees held in Israel. The Associated Press reported the same day that the Red Cross “has begun receiving lists again of Palestinian detainees.”

The Palestinian Center for the Missing and Forcibly Disappeared said in an Arabic-language statement on Oct. 25 that the list included more than 8,000 prisoners from across the Palestinian territories, among them 828 from Gaza whose families were told of their status. After the calls made by Red Cross teams, the center said, it emerged that the families of 127 of them had not known their relatives were still alive. The center calls the list incomplete: in its view, it does not reflect the true number of those detained and disappeared.

HaMoked’s update of Oct. 26 sets out what happened in court. It is summarized in this file under “In court.”

The Palestinian Commission of Detainees’ Affairs posted its Oct. 28 item in Arabic. Its headline says its legal team had received replies on where some detainees from the Gaza Strip are held in Israeli prisons. The page carries no body text, and its names appear only as images, so no count and no prison names are given here.