It is 2 pm in the waiting room of the orange-colored building at Nasser Hospital. A grim screening is coming to an end. Since 9 am, dozens of families from Gaza have sat on rows of plastic chairs, solemn and focused, watching a screen that shows photographs of decomposing, unrecognizable, sometimes dismembered, blinded, toothless bodies frozen in grotesque postures. These are the corpses of Palestinian detainees returned by Israel in exchange for Israeli hostages, as part of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas signed on October 10. In total, 400 bodies are expected to be returned.

A heavy silence hangs in the room, occasionally broken by muffled sobs, moans or whispered prayers. Families must endure this ordeal, as the identification process relies almost entirely on them. The bodies, handed over by the Israelis through the Red Cross, arrive without any identification or information regarding the circumstances of their deaths (all testimonies and footage have been collected via mobile phones, as Israel continues to bar international media from entering the Gaza Strip).

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