JERUSALEM – Israel’s military chief pledged Saturday to bring home the remains of an officer killed more than a decade ago in Gaza, after media reports that Hamas had pinpointed the location of his body following a search greenlit by Israel.
The army said Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir had met with the family of Lieutenant Hadar Goldin, who was killed during the 2014 six-week war in Gaza.
Since his death, Goldin’s body has been held in Gaza but Hamas has never publicly confirmed his death or acknowledged possession of his remains.
“Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir met this evening with the Goldin family and updated them on the information known to the IDF so far,” the military said in a statement, without specifying what the information was.
“The chief of the general staff emphasised his commitment and the IDF’s commitment to bringing back Hadar and all the fallen hostages.”
Israeli media reports said Israel had allowed Hamas and Red Cross personnel to conduct a search earlier on Saturday in an area under Israeli control, although neither Hamas nor the military has confirmed.
Several networks, including Channel 12, reported that the group had recovered Goldin’s remains in a tunnel under a part of the southern city of Rafah held by the army.
Another Israeli soldier, Oron Shaul, was also killed in the 2014 conflict. His body was recovered earlier this year during the latest war, which erupted after Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
Efforts to secure the return of both soldiers’ remains in past prisoner swaps had repeatedly failed.
Goldin, 23, was part of an Israeli unit tasked with locating and destroying Hamas tunnels when he was killed on August 1, 2014, just hours after a 72-hour humanitarian ceasefire took effect.
The army said his team came under fire from militants, who killed him and seized his body.
Israel has listed Goldin among the deceased hostages whose remains it seeks to repatriate under the ongoing US-brokered ceasefire deal to end the latest Gaza war.
At the start of the truce on Oct. 10, Hamas was holding 20 living hostages and 28 bodies of deceased captives.
It has since released all the living hostages and returned 23 sets of remains in line with the ceasefire terms.
In exchange, Israel has released nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners in its custody and returned the bodies of hundreds of Palestinians.
Apart from Goldin, four hostage bodies — three Israeli and one Thai — remain to be returned from Gaza, all of them seized during the October 2023 attack.
Meanwhile, Israel identified on Saturday the latest hostage remains sent back from Gaza by Palestinian militants, leaving only five more bodies to be returned under the US-brokered truce that halted the two-year war.
The Israeli military identified the body handed over on Friday as that of volunteer ambulance driver Lior Rudaeff, who was killed in the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack that triggered the Gaza war.
The Israeli-Argentinian was 61 at the time of the bloody cross-border attack and one of five armed civilians killed while trying to defend his community, the Nir Yitzhak kibbutz.
His death was confirmed by Israeli authorities in May 2024 and his name was put on the list of 20 living and 28 dead former hostages that Hamas agreed to return under the terms of the October ceasefire.
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum, a campaign group representing the Israeli families caught up in the crisis, welcomed Rudaeff’s homecoming.
“Lior’s return provides some measure of comfort to a family that has lived with agonising uncertainty and doubt for over two years,” it said. “We will not rest until the last hostage is brought home.”
Five more bodies remain to be returned — those of three Israelis and one Thai national seized in the Oct. 7 attack, and that of Israeli officer Hadar Goldin, who died in combat in 2014 during a previous Gaza conflict.
Several Israeli networks, including Channel 12, cited Hamas sources in reporting that the group had recovered Goldin’s remains in a tunnel in a part of the southern city of Rafah under Israeli army control.
Hamas has issued no official comment.
Israel’s military chief Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir met with Goldin’s family on Saturday and “updated them on the information known to the IDF so far”, the military said, without specifying what the information was.
Zamir “emphasized his commitment and the IDF’s commitment to bringing back Hadar and all the fallen hostages”, it added.
At the start of the truce last month, Hamas quickly returned 20 surviving hostages and Israel released hundreds of Palestinian detainees.
Under the stark mathematics of the ceasefire deal, for every dead Israeli hostage returned the bodies of 15 slain Palestinians are handed back.
Accordingly, on Saturday the Nasser Medical Centre in Khan Yunis announced the “arrival of the bodies of 15 martyrs from the Gaza Strip which had been held” by Israel — bringing the number returned to 300.
The Palestinian bodies were returned to the hospital by the Red Cross, as in previous transfers. The Palestinian remains have been returned unidentified and many have been consigned to mass graves.
Gaza’s health ministry, which operates under Hamas authority, said that among the 300 bodies received, only 89 have been identified so far.
The 15 received on Saturday “had gunshot wounds… and signs suggesting injuries caused by explosions”, said Ahmed Dhair, head of a committee to receive the bodies.
AFP footage showed medics at Nasser Medical Centre bringing the corpses in large white body bags.
Israel has accused Hamas of dragging its feet in returning the bodies of deceased hostages, while the Palestinian group says the process is slow because many are buried beneath Gaza’s bombed-out rubble.
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once again demanded that Hamas “uphold its commitments” and return the last five bodies.
“We will not compromise on this and will spare no effort until we return all of the deceased hostages, every last one of them,” it said.
Hamas’s Oct. 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
The Israeli military’s retaliatory campaign has since killed 69,169 Palestinians, also mostly civilians, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
The ministry, whose figures are considered reliable by the UN, does not specify the number of fighters killed within this total.
According to the Israeli army, 479 soldiers have been killed in the campaign in Gaza since the start of the ground offensive at the end of Oct. 2023.
