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Deir el-Balah and Khan Younis, Gaza Strip – Israa al-Areer stares at the big screen like she has done so many times since the bodies began arriving from Israel.

The process is repetitive. Every time the bodies of Palestinians are released by Israel, they arrive at southern Gaza’s Nasser Hospital, where they are photographed by forensic department staff. The pictures of the dead are then displayed on a screen in a large hall where families and friends of missing Palestinians watch on.

As one picture changes into the next, those in the hall strain to recognise their loved ones, in the hope that they’ll be able to give them a proper burial and have some closure.

Israa is not looking for just one, but two people – her husband, Yasser al-Tawil, and her brother, Diaa al-Areer. She believes both of them are dead.

Contact with both of them was lost on October 7, 2023 – the day the war in Gaza started. They are believed to have been near the border fence with Israel when the fighting began, and have not been heard from since.

Israa began her now regular journey from her home in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah to the hospital in Khan Younis on October 14, four days after the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas began. Israel handed over 45 bodies that day as part of the deal, with more returning in the days since.

“My mother and mother-in-law entrusted this painful mission to me, along with my brother and brother-in-law, saying they couldn’t bear to see the scene,” Israa said. “I couldn’t believe I had reached this point in my life: searching among the dead for my husband and brother, just to bury them and have a grave and a memory.”

But the scene that would greet Israa – and the dozens of others staring at the screens – was horrifying. Many of the bodies have decomposed, and many show signs of torture and abuse. The Israeli army has largely not provided any biographical information for the bodies it has sent to Gaza.

“They were the hardest moments of my life. Each image made me gasp in horror at what they did to the bodies,” Israa said. “I nearly lost my mind comparing the image of my beautiful husband in my memory with the horrific photos on that screen.”

“I saw bodies with stones, sand, and nails stuffed into their mouths. Some were blindfolded and handcuffed. Some had their fingernails or fingers cut off. Some had limbs missing. Others looked like they’d been run over by tanks,” she added. “It was savage, inhuman torture, nothing I ever imagined seeing. I cried all the way home, feeling my heart had burned completely.”

The session went on for four hours, but despite repeatedly trying to analyse each photo, it became clear that Yasser and Diaa were not among them.

Disappearance

Yasser, who was in his early 30s when he disappeared, typically spent his Friday night with his friends before coming back home in the morning.

Israa therefore last saw her husband earlier on Friday, which happened to be October 6, 2023.

“That night everything was normal,” said Israa. “I called him before I went to sleep, about one in the morning. Our only daughter, Abeer, four years old, had a fever. He reassured me that he would be home by 6am.”

Israa woke up on Saturday to the sounds of rockets and bombing.

“I couldn’t believe what was happening. I was terrified and immediately tried calling my husband, but his phone was unreachable,” she recalled.

“I had no electricity or internet to understand what was going on, so I went to my neighbour’s apartment to follow the news. That’s when I realised the scale of what was happening,” said Israa, who works as a journalist.

Israa tried to call Yasser, but wasn’t able to get through. Hours later, she was finally able to reach one of Yasser’s friends. He told her the group of friends had been curious and gone to eastern Khan Younis, near where they live, when they heard about the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel.

But then, in the midst of the chaos in the border region, they had gotten separated. The friend didn’t know what had happened to her husband.

“His words shocked me. I was terrified and kept wondering why he went there,” Israa said sorrowfully. “The situation that day was chaotic; many civilians crossed the border areas with Israel on October 7.”

To make matters worse, Israa’s family also informed her that her 24-year-old brother, Diaa, had gone missing too after going to the border area with his friends.

As the situation worsened, one of Yasser’s friends advised Israa to search the nearby hospitals for him among the wounded or the dead.

“I left my daughter with my neighbour and went myself, running among the bodies in the hospitals,” Israa said, swallowing her tears. “My heart was breaking. I couldn’t believe that my husband might be dead or one of those bodies.”

But she didn’t find her husband among the wounded or the killed. Her family, who searched for her missing brother in Gaza City’s hospitals, found nothing either.

“I came back home completely broken. Nothing terrified me more than losing my husband and my brother on the same day without knowing anything about them.”

Israa describes the crushing loneliness she felt spending the night at home with her only child for the first time since marrying in 2019.

“Our life was happy, rosy in every sense. Yasser was a loving husband and a kind father, very generous with us. Losing him broke my heart completely,” Israa said, as she wept.

Endlessly searching

In the two years since, Israa has not been able to grieve for Yasser or Diaa. Her family has contacted the Red Cross and the Palestinian Ministry of Health, but has not received any information. There may be a small chance that the two have been detained, but Israa and her family believe that it is more likely that they are dead.

As the war dragged on, Israa and her family, like almost everyone else in Gaza, were caught in the tragedy of displacement and fear, moving more than nine times across the enclave.

The pain of war often made her think that perhaps her husband and brother were spared the unbearable suffering she was enduring.

“But the burden fell on me,” Israa said sorrowfully. “I decided to return to work as a freelance journalist with international and Arab outlets, to occupy myself and stop drowning in grief.”

The ceasefire deal brought back the possibility that Yasser and Diaa could finally be found.

Since her fruitless journey on October 14, Israa has repeatedly returned to Nasser Hospital.

The process is the same – she sits looking at the big screen, and then reviews the photos again on the Ministry of Health website whenever there is internet access.

But the condition the bodies were in made it difficult to recognise them, often causing confusion.

“We would ask the staff to go back to a photo, to zoom in on a hand or a body part to be sure. Everyone was on edge, clinging to the faint hope of finding their loved one,” Israa said.

“There was a mother next to me who screamed when she recognised her son from his clothes. She collapsed in tears, but there was relief; they had finally found him,” Israa recalled. “I was happy for her, even through my pain. I kept looking carefully at the hands of the bodies, searching for my husband’s wedding ring.”

Once, Israa was convinced one of the displayed bodies was her husband’s. “I examined every detail and was sure it was him. I went to the hospital full of hope to finally bury him. But when they checked the body, the underwear and body shape didn’t match.”

The forensic department required clear identifying marks before releasing any body to families.

“I witnessed three families arguing over one body, each convinced it was their son,” she said. “Finally, one father proved it was his, showing evidence of an old injury on the foot. The forensic doctors confirmed it and handed it over.”

“It’s an unjust world,” Israa added. “To identify the Israeli bodies held in Gaza, full excavation and detection equipment were brought in, yet not even a single DNA testing device is allowed to enter here, while dozens of bodies are buried every day without identification. What kind of logic is that?”

Israa describes this time as unbearably painful. Friends and relatives begged her to stop torturing herself and rest after she searched through yet another group of bodies that had been delivered.

“They told me, ‘Have mercy on yourself, we’ll bury you before we bury your husband. Stop this,’” she said. “But deep down, I couldn’t. What if my husband or brother were among those bodies and no one recognised them? I could never forgive myself.”

Since 2007, Marcelo Salazar has been living in the place that is the king of deforestation in Brazil: Altamira, in the state of Para. About the size of Florida, the Amazonian municipality was the fastest deforester in the country for several years in a row.

Drivers of deforestation there range from land grabbing, cattle ranching, mining and hydroelectric dams to large infrastructure projects. Since August, Salazar, an activist and sustainable entrepreneur, however, has had a new headache: soya.

“Soya is approaching our region”, says Salazar. “This isn’t a common area for soya, but it is rapidly pushing north from the state of Mato Grosso, one of the biggest soya producers in Brazil.”

One of the reasons behind this expansion is an attempt to suspend the soya moratorium, a voluntary agreement between soya trading companies, NGOs and Brazilian government agencies, that was established in 2006.

Under it, soya traders have agreed not to buy soya from land that has been deforested after 2008. An entire monitoring apparatus has been put in place to check where soya is coming from, and where deforestation has taken place, using techniques like satellite imagery.

At the end of August, however, the Brazilian competition regulator CADE decided to open an investigation into the soya moratorium, suggesting it might be a company cartel. In expectation of the results, the moratorium was suspended. A judge, in turn, lifted that suspension.

CADE then agreed to delay the suspension. But on November 6, right as the COP30 is starting, Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Flavio Dino suspended the investigation of CADE, at least until the Supreme Court makes a decision on the case, which is scheduled between November 14 and 25.

Still, the moratorium remains in a strange limbo that is already causing effects on the ground in Altamira.

“Soya doesn’t deforest directly”, says Salazar. “Investors buy land that was deforested by others, such as cattle ranchers. The sellers then go to the land behind it and start over. So far, direct deforestation doesn’t happen often, but even legal soya cultivation increases land prices and drives a destructive cycle. Just last week, I attended a meeting in Altamira by soya investors, where they cheered on the suspension of the moratorium.”

The attempted suspension is happening at a contentious time for Brazil. In November, the COP30, the UN Climate Change Conference, is taking place in Belem, Brazil, in the Amazon, about 500 kilometres (310 miles) from the city of Altamira. Concurrently, Brazil has experienced trade tensions with the US, and is in the process of approving a trade deal between Mercosur – a South American trade bloc composed of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia – and the European Union.

“The consequences of a suspension would be really serious”, says Mauricio Voivodic, executive director of WWF Brazil, a Brazilian NGO that’s part of the global World Wide Fund for Nature network. “If the moratorium were to be banned, soya would spread across the Amazon at lightning speed.”

Valuable deforestation

According to Holly Gibbs, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she leads the Global Land Use and Environment Lab, the moratorium has been instrumental for environmental preservation. Gibbs was one of the authors of a 2020 study in Nature Food, which noted deep reductions in deforestation because of the soya moratorium.

“The moratorium is one of the only measures that actually slowed down Amazon deforestation in a measurable way”, she says. “It hasn’t halted all deforestation. But it reduced the value of it.”

Soya is the highest value use of land in the Amazon. The economic value per square hectare of soya farming is much higher than, for example, cattle rearing.

“This is why it historically drove deforestation”, says Gibbs. “Someone might clear land, and then hope a soy farmer would come in and pay top dollar for it. Soy made deforestation very valuable in the Amazon. The soy moratorium flips that logic on its head.”

Most deforestation today happens because of cattle farming, which has lower economic benefits than soya. “Before the moratorium, about 30 percent of soy came from recently deforested land”, says Gibbs. “Today, less than 1 percent of soy comes from recently deforested land. The moratorium caused a rapid drop.”

According to critics of the moratorium, the system, however, represents an extra layer of bureaucracy for farmers. Deforestation is already regulated and mostly banned in the Amazon under Brazilian law. The moratorium, according to them, causes a confusing double set of rules.

In a statement, the soya producer’s association Aprosoja Mato Grosso, one of the most notorious opponents of the moratorium, noted that the private agreement doesn’t have legal backing and harms small and medium-sized farmers. Aprosoja Mato Grosso didn’t respond to a request for comment.

According to proponents, however, Brazilian law isn’t enough to actually protect the Amazon. Even though deforestation is technically illegal in the area, it still often happens without consequences for those doing the cutting.

“The Brazilian law is very good, but controls are lacking”, says Salazar. “The Brazilian government agencies responsible don’t have the means to go into the countryside and apply fines, and make sure they are paid. We need the market to help.”

Mercosur

The attempted suspension of the moratorium happens at a striking time internationally. United States President Donald Trump hit Brazil with trade restrictions after it convicted ex-President Jair Bolsonaro of an attempted coup. Also, the EU is currently approving a trade deal with Mercosur. The deal is controversial because of, among other things, environmental concerns.

It is, for example, doubtful that markets like the EU would want to buy soya coming from deforested land, even if the moratorium were to be banned. The EU is also introducing a new EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), which will halt imports of commodities such as soya if they hail from deforested areas. However, that doesn’t mean that the moratorium would be unnecessary.

“The EUDR bans certain commodities produced in areas deforested after 2020”, says Rafaella Ferraz Ziegert, a PhD researcher at the German University of Freiburg. “That clashes with the cut-off date of the moratorium, which is 2008. That inconsistency would open up a chunk of land the size of Ireland to soya production, granting a de facto amnesty to producers previously constrained by the moratorium.”

The push to end the moratorium might also, however, be a representation of the confusing arena of Brazilian politics.

Even though President Lula da Silva has publicly proclaimed he wants to stop deforestation, he still needs to ally himself with traditional elites more sceptical of environmental protection. The far-right movement that brought ex-president Bolsonaro to power is also still popular in the country, and might see an end to the soya moratorium as a victory against the Lula government.

“The Brazilian federal government doesn’t hold one position”, says Voivodic of WWF Brazil. “Lula had to create a coalition with varying interests. The Environmental Ministry is in favour of the moratorium. The Agricultural Ministry, however, is against it. The Finance Ministry, in turn, is concerned about the effects on trade. Lula, in the meantime, hasn’t made a statement yet. The Brazilian government isn’t homogeneous at all.”

The attempted suspension of the moratorium will also likely embarrass the Lula government during the COP30. “The whole narrative of Brazil being a champion of the climate may be affected”, says Voivodic. “Those outside of Brazil will see how the discourse of the government differs from the destruction of the Amazon happening on the ground.”

Wrong direction

Sectors of Brazilian agri-business have been resisting measures like the soya moratorium for decades. This attempted suspension is just the last battle in a decades-long push-and-shove between them and environmental movements.

“It is hard to say why exactly the attempt to suspend happened now”, says the German university researcher Ferraz Ziegert. “This has been a long-term process. Since the beginning of the 2000s, there has been opposition to the soy moratorium. Little by little, they have been trying to find a space for this to happen, riding on conservative political waves.”

A parallel push against the soya moratorium has been happening in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso. Its governor, Mauro Mendes, has decreed that every trader who follows the soya moratorium will lose access to tax incentives. Aprosoja Mato Grosso is also launching court cases against traders, demanding they compensate farmers for alleged losses incurred from the moratorium.

“If those measures really succeed, I don’t know what the future will hold for the soy moratorium”, says Ziegert. “It would mean that the trading companies would lose money, which might cause the private sector to waver in their support.”

Opponents, of course, cannot force traders to buy from deforested land, with or without the moratorium. If the moratorium were to be banned, it would mean that the responsibility for not buying soya from deforested lands in the Amazon would fall on individual companies, making it harder to maintain sustainability commitments.

“The beauty of the moratorium is that it is a sectoral agreement with checks and balances”, says Ferraz Ziegert. “Real change on the ground happens when the entire sector agrees, rather than stand-alone voluntary company commitments.”

Back in Altamira, Salazar is worried about a possible ban on the moratorium. Not just because it would speed up deforestation, but also because it represents a step backwards.