Israel receives the remains of Hadar Goldin, an Israeli soldier killed in Gaza in 2014

Israel has received the remains of an Israeli soldier who was killed in Gaza in 2014 and who had been held in the territory Since then.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said forensic tests confirmed the identity of the remains as those of Lt. Hadar Goldin, 23, who was murdered on August 1, 2014two hours after a ceasefire ended that year’s war between Israel and Hamas.

“The Israeli government shares the deep pain of the Goldin family and all the families of the deceased hostages,” a statement said. “The government and the entire Israel Defense Forces are determined, committed and working tirelessly to return all of our deceased abductees to a proper burial in their country.”

Hamas said earlier on Sunday that it had found Goldin’s body in a tunnel in the city of Rafah, on the southern edge of the enclave, on Saturday. The Israeli military had long determined that he had been murdered, based on evidence found in the tunnel where his body was taken in 2014, including a blood-soaked shirt and prayer fringes.

The remains of four hostages who were taken during the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7, 2023 are still in Gaza.

The return of Goldin’s remains is a significant development in the US-brokered truce, which many fear has faltered amid the slow return of hostages’ bodies and skirmishes between Israeli troops and militants in Gaza. It also closes a painful 11-year saga for his family and in Israel, where Goldin has become a national symbol.

At the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said holding the body for so long has caused “great agony to his family, who will now be able to give him a Jewish burial.”

Goldin’s family led a very public campaign, along with the family of another soldier whose body was removed in 2014, to bring her children home for burial. Israel recovered the remains of the other soldier, Oron Shaul, earlier this year.

Netanyahu said the government would continue to try to bring home the bodies of other Israelis killed while serving the country, including Eli Cohen, an Israeli spy hanged in Damascus in 1965, whose exploits were celebrated in ‘The Spy,’ a 2019 television series.

Israeli media, citing unnamed officials, had previously 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 town of Rafah, on the southern edge of the enclave.

Gila Gamliel, Minister of Innovation, Science and Technology and a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, told Army Radio that Israel is not negotiating a deal within a deal.

“There are agreements whose implementation is guaranteed by mediators, and we should not allow anyone to come now to play and reopen the agreement,” he said.

Hamas did not comment on a possible exchange of its fighters trapped in the so-called yellow zone, controlled by Israeli forces, although it acknowledged that fighting is taking place there.

Buried American-Israeli soldier

The funeral of Sgt. Itay Chen, an American-Israeli soldier who died during the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7, 2023 and whose body was came back last weekwas held on Sunday in Tel Aviv.

Chen, 19, of the 77th Battalion of the 7th Brigade, was kidnapped by Hamas after falling from a tank and his death was officially confirmed on March 10, 2024.

Hundreds of people gathered for his funeral at Tel Aviv’s Kiryat Shaul cemetery on Sunday.

“I did not know Itay physically, but I came to know him through the strength of those who loved him. The courage of his family, his refusal to allow this world to forget him, became a beacon not only to me, but to many others around the world,” U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff said in a eulogy. “They reminded us that even in the darkness the light does not go out. It waits to be carried by those who refuse to give up.”

Since the ceasefire began last month, militants have freed the remains of 23 hostages. As part of the truce agreement, the militants are expected to return all the remains of the hostages.

For every 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 the remains of 300 people have already been returned and 89 have been identified.

The war began with a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, in which around 1,200 people, most of them civilians, were killed and 251 people were kidnapped.

On Saturday, the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry said the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza had risen to 69,176. The ministry, which is part of the Hamas-led government and is staffed by medical professionals, maintains detailed records that are generally considered reliable by independent experts.