Balata refugee camp, occupied West Bank – Jameela Sanaqra’s three sons are gone. She knows for certain that Israel killed two of them.

Her third son, her youngest, Mahmoud, was shot in his bedroom by Israeli commandos on February 27, a week before his 26th birthday.

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He was taken by the soldiers and has not been returned to his family.

She does not know if he is dead or alive, adding to her grief and mental torment.

“Palestinian mothers carry their sons twice; once in the womb, and then on the day of their burial procession,” 67-year-old Jameela told Al Jazeera in her home in the Balata refugee camp.

Mahmoud is likely one of the more than 2,220 Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank and Gaza whose bodies are held by Israel, often in refrigerators or buried in numbered cemeteries, according to the Palestinian National Campaign for the Recovery of Martyrs’ Bodies.

The Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center (JLAC) says Israel uses the practice as a weapon of war and as a means to deny Palestinians the chance to mourn lost loved ones.

Like so many other Palestinian mothers, Jameela has been deprived of the opportunity to carry the last of her sons to his final resting place.

Refugee camp under attack

Balata, east of Nablus, is the most populated refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, established in 1950.

It is less than a quarter of a square kilometre, about the size of 35 football fields, with at least 33,000 people crammed into its narrow streets.

Walls and windows are emblazoned, like shrines, with the faces of more than 45 Palestinians locals say Israel has killed since October 7.

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Palestinian resistance groups operating under the cover of the camp’s labyrinthine network of alleyways and favela-like dwellings have long been a thorn in the side of the Israeli military.

Towering over the camp is a Byzantine-era Greek Orthodox Church known as Jacob’s Well. Further up the road is a funerary monument known as Joseph’s Tomb in Judaism, believed to be the resting place of the biblical patriarch.

The site is significant to Palestinians because it is believed to be the resting place of Sheikh Yousef Dweikat, a renowned religious scholar, who was buried in the 18th century.

Joseph Tomb’s significance to Judaism and relevance to the Zionist tradition have made it a target for the ultranationalist elements of Netanyahu’s coalition, who want it under Israeli control.

Busloads of armed settlers – escorted by soldiers – storm the site to intimidate, chant and perform religious rituals on the doorsteps of its Palestinian neighbours, inciting violence and clashes.

Balata has been under siege since Israel stepped up its onslaught on the West Bank following Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attacks.

When it raids the camp, the Israeli army destroys the roads and dozens of buildings at a time.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) says the camp, akin to a ghetto, has one of the highest rates of unemployment, poverty and food insecurity anywhere in the West Bank. More than 60 per cent of the camp’s population is under the age of 18.

Kidnapping dead bodies

The Sanaqra family has prepared an empty plot in Balata’s cemetery for Mahmoud, next to the bodies of his older brothers, Ahmad and Ibrahim.

The family is waiting for Mahmoud’s body or confirmation of his death. But they know they are unlikely to get either.

The JLAC says Israel still holds bodies from as far back as the 1967 War.

“The occupation authorities impose their control over the deepest feelings of loss, often forcing families to wait endlessly to retrieve the bodies of their children,” a report for the JLAC’s National Campaign to Retrieve War Victims states.

Jameela sat in her living room with two of her four daughters, Bara’a and Amira, and two of her seven grandchildren, Amira’s daughters. Her husband, mournful and solemn, sat quietly by the door.

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She is sure that Mahmoud’s body not being returned is part of the collective punishment her family suffers because her eldest son, Ahmad, fought for Palestinian armed groups before he was killed in 2008, aged 20.

“It is a desecration,” said Jameela.

“It’s torture for the families, especially the mothers. Closure is impossible; there’s no grave I can go to to pray for him, speak to him and mourn peacefully.”

Al Jazeera reached out to the Israeli military for comment on Mahmoud’s case, but received no response.

Punishment and resilience

Mahmoud’s short life was dominated by trauma and bereavement.

In an era-defining photo of the second Intifada, five-year-old Mahmoud’s arm covers his tears as he looks over the rubble of his home in 2004, destroyed by soldiers to punish the family for his brother Ahmad’s resistance activities.

Two years later, during an Israeli army raid on Balata in November 2006, Mahmoud’s middle brother Ibrahim – who was not part of the resistance – was out looking for Ahmad when a soldier shot the 16-year-old in the leg, hitting a major artery, a wound that would prove fatal.

Then, in 2008, Mahmoud was pictured weeping over Ahmad’s body after he was assassinated, in an image that went viral. Ahmad, who joined the resistance in his early teens, was shot dead in the same house as his little brother would be 17 years later.

Mahmoud would face the military himself years later. In 2022, a video of soldiers beating him mercilessly in front of Jameela in the family home gained international attention.

After he was killed, Israeli media said Mahmoud was wanted over accusations of arms trafficking, perpetrating shootings and planting explosives. They announced the military had killed “Balata’s most wanted”, the family said.

The Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, an armed group affiliated with the political party Fatah, paid tribute to Mahmoud’s contribution to resistance in the camp on Telegram.

His mother refuses to believe he was a fighter, but other camp residents say they knew him to be involved in the resistance.

It is also possible that Jameela was unaware of his activities.

Jameela told the story of Mahmoud’s shooting beneath a picture of her slain sons – the frame shattered by the soldiers who invaded her home the day they attacked Mahmoud.

“My mind is scattered, and there’s a fire in me that can only be extinguished once I’ve buried Mahmoud next to his brothers,” she said.

Israeli soldiers left a trail of devastation in the Sanaqra household during February’s attack, much of which the family cannot afford to repair.

Jameela recalls how two soldiers burst through the door early in the morning and violently confined the entire family to one room, apart from Mahmoud, who remained locked in his bedroom.

“They hit me, knocked me over, stomped on my chest and my leg as I was lying on the floor,” Jameela added.

“A dog attacked Bara’a; he chased her and bit her leg … One of the soldiers told me I was the reason my sons were ‘terrorists’ – and the reason they were killed,” Jameela said.

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“Another of the soldiers asked me how many martyrs I have in the family, and after I responded by saying two, he told me I now had three … I started screaming… I felt helpless as a mother. I couldn’t help my son.”

As shots rang out upstairs, the Sanaqra family frantically screamed Mahmoud’s name as soldiers held them at gunpoint, demanding that they tell them where weapons were being hidden.

Jameela remembered the short, loud and terrible cry of agony – interrupted by gunshots – that she believes to be her son’s final utterance in this life. She says it haunts her family home to this day.

By the time the family was freed from their detention, Mahmoud’s body was gone, and so were the soldiers.

Jameela produced Mahmoud’s blood-stained clothes – a T-shirt and trousers ridden with bullet holes, suggesting almost no part of his body was left unscathed. Soldiers stripped him and dragged him down the stairs, leaving “a trail of blood”.

Mahmoud’s mattress, clothes and carpet remain covered in blood – and have been left untouched since the attack. Bullet holes have peppered the walls and the window frames.

Nablus-based psychologist, Nesreen Bsharat, leads a support group for mothers in Balata and provides online therapy for children in Gaza.

“Palestinian mothers… have the same maternal instinct as every other mother in the world,” she told Al Jazeera. “They don’t want their children to die.”

“But the difference is, when it is the child’s choice, then the mother finds herself having to accept it,” Bsharat added.

Since October 7, the residents of Balata say there has been no rest from military raids, which happen almost every day.

Many families who can afford it are leaving, while those who can’t are left to either endure or resist – and could face displacement regardless.

More than 40,000 refugee camp residents from the nearby cities of Tulkarem and Jenin – both at the heart of the resistance axis in the West Bank – have already been displaced, and Balata residents fear they are next.

Israel is making life unbearable for those in the camps.

“They hurt who’s closest to you to cause you the most pain,” Jameela said. “I don’t want anything in life but to be with my sons now.”

“The Palestinian mother likes to raise her children in accordance with their values and religion. She aspires for her kids to become engineers, doctors, teachers,” Jameela said.

“She wants her child to be the best version of himself … But Israel won’t allow this.

“They won’t let us live in peace.”