Israel announced this Tuesday evening that it had received, through the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the alleged remains of one of the last three hostages in the Gaza Strip who have not yet been identified by the authorities.
According to the Jewish state, the body was handed over to the ICRC in Gaza, which then handed it over to the Israeli army there. The soldiers then took him to Israeli soil to be identified at the National Institute of Forensic Medicine in Tel Aviv.
“After completing the identification process, the family (from hostages) will be officially notified,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement, without lifting the lid on his possible identity.
The armed wings of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas and Islamic Jihad announced earlier on Tuesday that they would return the bodies of the 26th of 28 hostages held in the Gaza Strip before the ceasefire agreement. This body was discovered the day before “during a search operation in territory controlled by the Zionist army (Israel) in the middle of the Gaza Strip,” said Islamic Jihad, an ally of Hamas.
In recent weeks, Hamas members, for example, have been able to go to the Gaza Strip area which is now under the control of the Israeli army to find the remains of the hostages they have.
Under the terms of a ceasefire agreement that took effect on October 10 after more than two years of war in Gaza, Hamas and its allies must still return the remains of three hostages as of October 7, 2023: two Israelis, Ran Gvili and Dror Or, and a Thai citizen, Sudthisak Rinthalak.
Delays related to ceasefire violations
Israeli authorities condemned the ceasefire violation over the delay in sending the bodies of the final hostages. Hamas explains this by the difficulty of finding remains under rubble caused by Israeli bombing, as well as a lack of cleaning equipment.
An officer in the elite police unit (Yassam) in the Negev region, Ran Gvili was on sick leave, awaiting shoulder surgery, when he left his home with his personal weapon to defend Kibbutz Aloumim before he was killed in an unprecedented Hamas attack on Israel that sparked the war.
Chef, Dror Or, was killed at Kibbutz Beeri, as was his wife Yonat. Their daughter Alma, their son Noam, and their nephew Liam were kidnapped, then released in the first ceasefire, in late November 2023. Originally from Nong Khai province, in northeastern Thailand, Sudthisak Rinthalak was a farm worker at Kibbutz Beeri, where he was murdered.
“Dror, Ran and Sudthisak must return. We cannot stop (our mobilization) until they return,” the Hostage Families Forum, the main Israeli organization fighting for the return of the captives, told X.
“I miss my brother so much. I want him back (…) The constant fear that this won’t happen is exhausting,” added Ran Gvili’s sister Shira.
