TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israel said the Red Cross has received the remains of a hostage in Gaza after Hamas announced that it was releasing the body of Hadar Goldin, an Israeli soldier killed in 2014 whose body has been held in captivity for 11 years.
The remains will be transferred on Sunday to Israel and to the national forensic institute for identification.
If the body is identified as a hostage, there will be four bodies of hostages remaining in Gaza.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Hamas announced it will hand over on Sunday afternoon the body of an Israeli soldier who was killed in 2014 and who has been held in Gaza since then. His remains are the only ones held in Gaza since before the latest, two-year war between Israel and Hamas.
According to the announcement, Hamas said it found the the body of the Israeli soldier, Hadar Goldin, in a tunnel in the enclave's southernmost city of Rafah on Saturday. Goldin was killed on Aug. 1, 2014, two hours after a ceasefire took effect ending the that year’s war between Israel and Hamas.
His return would be a significant development in the U.S.-brokered truce and close a painful, 11-year saga for his family. At the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he expected Hamas to release Goldin's body on Sunday
Holding the body for 11 years has caused “great agony of his family, which will now be able to give him a Jewish burial,” he said. Goldin's family spearheaded a campaign, along with the family of another soldier whose body was taken in 2014, to bring their sons home for burial. Israel recovered the remains of the second soldier earlier this year.
Netanyahu said the country would continue trying to bring home the bodies of Israelis still being held across enemy lines, such as Eli Cohen, an Israeli spy hung in Damascus in 1965.
Israeli media, citing anonymous officials, have reported that Hamas was delaying the release of Goldin's body in hopes of negotiating safe passage for more than 100 militants surrounded by Israeli forces and trapped in the enclave's southernmost city of Rafah.
Gila Gamliel, the Minister of Innovation, Science and Technology and a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party, told Army radio on Sunday that Israel is not negotiating for a deal within a deal.
“There are agreements whose implementation is guaranteed by the mediators, and we shouldn't allow anyone to come know and play (games) and to reopen the agreement,” she said.
Hamas made no comment on a possible exchange for its fighters stuck in the so-called yellow zone, which is controlled by Israeli forces, though they acknowledged that there are clashes taking place there.
Goldin is one of five bodies of deceased hostages still remaining in Gaza. As part of the U.S.-brokered ctruce deal, the militants are expected to return all of the remains of hostages.
Since the ceasefire began last month, militants have released the remains of 23 hostages. For each Israeli hostage returned, Israel has been releasing the remains of 15 Palestinians.
Ahmed Dheir, director of forensic medicine at Nasser Hospital in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, said that the remains of 300 have now been returned, with 89 identified.
The war began with a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in which 251 people were kidnapped and 1,200 killed in Israel, mostly civilians.
On Saturday, Gaza’s Health Ministry said the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza has risen to 69,176. The ministry, part of the Hamas-run government and staffed by medical professionals, maintains detailed records viewed as generally reliable by independent experts.
Back in 2014, the Israeli military determined, based on evidence found in the tunnel where Goldin’s body was taken — including a blood-soaked shirt and prayer fringes — that he had been killed in the attack. His family held what Leah Goldin now calls a “pseudo-funeral’ including Goldin’s shirt and fringes, at the urging of Israel’s military rabbis. But the lingering uncertainty was like a “knife constantly making new cuts.”
Leah Goldin told the Associated Press earlier this year that returning her son's body is an ethical and religious value, part of the sacrosanct pact Israel makes with its citizens, who are required by law to serve in the military.
“Hadar is a soldier who went to combat and they abandoned him, and they destroyed his humanitarian rights and ours as well,” Goldin said. She said her family often felt alone in their struggle to bring Hadar, a talented artist who had just gotten engaged, home for burial.
In the dizzying days after Hamas’ attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the Goldin family threw themselves into attempting to help hundreds of families of the 251 people Hamas had dragged into Gaza. Initially, the Goldins found themselves shunned as advocacy for the Oct. 7 hostages surged. “We were a symbol of failure,” Goldin recalled. “They told us, ‘we aren’t like you, our kids will come back soon.’”
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Chehayeb reported from Beirut.
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