Hamas handed over to the Red Cross a coffin containing the body of the soldier, who appeared with the hostages on Oct. 7 on a list of bodies to be returned to Israel as part of the ceasefire agreement.
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The end of a decade of waiting for those close to Hadar Goldin. Israel announced on Sunday evening, November 9, that the bodies handed over by the Red Cross a little earlier were indeed the bodies of Israeli soldiers killed in 2014 in the Gaza Strip, as Hamas announced. The young man’s body had been kept in the enclave for eleven years. After the welcome “during military ceremonies” in Israel, he was officially identified by forensic services, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said.
On Saturday, the rumors began to circulate, with a video circulating showing Hamas gunmen accompanied by Red Cross members entering a Gaza tunnel to remove the body thought to be that of Hadar Goldin. In the process, several Israeli media reported that Israel had authorized members of Hamas and the Red Cross to carry out research in a tunnel in the part of the city of Rafah which is currently controlled by the Israeli army.
According to the Israeli army, Hadar Goldin was killed on August 1, 2014, at the age of 23, during a mission with his reconnaissance unit in a tunnel near Rafah, during the previous war in the Gaza Strip. For years, his remains, as well as those of soldier Oron Shaoul, killed the same summer at the age of 21, were at the center of indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas with the specific aim of the release of Palestinian prisoners. Last January, Oron Shaoul’s body was brought back from Gaza to Israel by Israeli soldiers.
Hadar Goldin’s body was the 24th hostage handed over by Hamas of 28 hostages the Palestinian group had promised to return as part of a ceasefire agreement in Gaza. The other victims were three Israeli citizens and one Thai citizen, all of whom died in the Hamas attack in Israel on October 7 2023 which triggered the war in Gaza.
Since the start of the ceasefire in Gaza, the Palestinian Islamic movement has also freed the last 20 surviving hostages as of October 7. In return, Israel freed nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and returned the bodies of 15 murdered Palestinians for every dead Israeli hostage.
