Israel confirms it has received the remains of a soldier killed in Gaza in 2014

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) – Israel on Sunday confirmed it had received the remains of Hadar Goldin, a soldier killed in Gaza in 2014, closing a painful chapter for the country.

The 23-year-old was killed two hours after a ceasefire took effect in that year’s war between Israel and Hamas. Goldin’s family waged a public campaign for 11 years to bring home his remains. Earlier this year, they marked 4,000 days since his body was taken.

Israel’s military had long determined that he had been killed, based on evidence found in the tunnel where his body was taken, including a blood-soaked shirt and prayer fringes. His remains had been the only ones left in Gaza predating the current war between Israel and Hamas.

The remains of four hostages taken in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack that sparked the current war are still in Gaza.

The return of the remains of Goldin, who has become a national symbol, were a significant development in the U.S.-brokered truce, which has faltered during the slow return of bodies of hostages and skirmishes between Israeli troops and militants in Gaza.

The Red Cross had transferred the remains to Israel’s military in Gaza. Dozens of people gathered along intersections where the police convoy carried the remains to the national forensic institute in Tel Aviv, paying last respects.

“We’re really excited. We’ve got conflicting feelings,” said Hanini Cormey, who had served alongside Goldin.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the weekly Cabinet meeting that holding the body for so long has caused “great agony of his family, which will now be able to give him a Jewish burial.”

President Donald Trump’s son in law, Jared Kushner, has returned to Israel to help press ahead with ceasefire efforts, said a person familiar with the matter. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the visit has not been publicly announced.

Kushner, a top adviser to Trump, was a key architect of the U.S. 20-point ceasefire plan. The deal that took effect Oct. 10 has focused on the first phase of halting the fighting, releasing all hostages and boosting humanitarian aid to Gaza. Details of the second phase, including deploying an international security force, disarming Hamas and governing postwar Gaza, have not been worked out.

The person familiar with the visit had no further details on Kushner’s schedule or how long he would be in Israel.

Israel recovered the remains of another soldier killed in 2014, Oron Shaul, earlier this year.

Netanyahu said that the country would continue trying to bring home the bodies of Israelis still held across enemy lines, such as Eli Cohen, an Israeli spy hanged in Damascus in 1965.

Israeli media, citing anonymous officials, 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 Rafah.

Gila Gamliel, the minister of innovation, science and technology and a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, told Army Radio that Israel isn’t 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 now 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 clashes were taking place there.

Goldin’s family had held what his mother, Leah Goldin, has called a “pseudo-funeral” 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 has ethical and religious value and is 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 that her family often felt alone in their struggle to bring Hadar, a talented artist who had just become engaged, home for burial.

After the Oct. 7 attack, the Goldin family threw themselves into attempting to help hundreds of families of those abducted and dragged into Gaza. Initially, the Goldins found themselves shunned as advocacy for the hostages surged.

“We were a symbol of failure,” Goldin recalled. “They told us, ‘we aren’t like you, our kids will come back soon.'”

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 around 1,200 people were killed, most of them civilians, and 251 people kidnapped.

On Saturday, Gaza’s Health Ministry said that 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.

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Associated Press writer Kareem Chehayeb reported from Beirut. Josef Federman in Jerusalem contributed.