Israel has received the body of Lt Hadar Goldin, a soldier killed in an ambush by Hamas in 2014 and whose body has been held in Gaza since then.
The Israeli military said Lt Goldin, who was 23 when he died, was formally identified and will now be buried. He left behind parents, a sister, two brothers, and a fiancée.
Hamas’s armed wing had said on Sunday that it would hand over Lt Goldin’s body as part of a ceasefire deal.
Hamas has now returned all 20 living hostages, and 24 out of 28 deceased hostages under the first phase of the deal.
On Sunday, Lt Goldin’s father Simcha Goldin said in a statement: “Victory means bringing home the hostages and bringing home our soldiers to Israel.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog both said they had kept a picture of Lt Goldin in their offices for the past 11 years.
Netanyahu said “we didn’t give up” on bringing him home.
“I know the agony that his family’s been through, I know the longing for his return that united the people of Israel and today we’re united in bringing him finally to his parents, to his family, to a grave in Israel.”
Efforts to retrieve Lt Goldin “involved extensive intelligence efforts, alongside operational activities on the ground” over the past decade and during the last two years of war between Israel and Hamas, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said.
The military expressed “deep condolences to the family and continues to make every effort to return all the deceased hostages and is prepared for the continued implementation of the agreement”.
Herzog said the government would “continue to act tirelessly” to bring home all the hostages.
Of the four hostages who remain in Gaza, three are Israeli and one is Thai.
Lt Goldin, from Kfar Saba, is the only deceased hostage whose remains were being held in Gaza before the Hamas-led 7 October 2023 attack on Israel, which sparked the latest war.
He was killed in combat on 1 August 2014, not long after the start of a ceasefire in that year’s war between Israel and Hamas. He was among a group of Israeli soldiers patrolling an agricultural area near Rafah in southern Gaza when they were attacked by a group of Hamas fighters.
The Israeli military determined that Lt Goldin was killed along with two other soldiers in a firefight, and that his body was then dragged into an underground tunnel by the Hamas fighters.
The Israeli military unleashed massive firepower to try to prevent Hamas from taking Lt Goldin hostage. Scores of Palestinian civilians were killed in the bombardment of Rafah, which continued for four days, including after Lt Goldin was declared dead.
Nine years later, the Israeli military launched a campaign in Gaza in response to the 7 October 2023 attack, in which Hamas-led gunmen killed about 1,200 people in southern Israel and took 251 others hostage.
At least 69,176 people have been killed by Israeli attacks in Gaza since then, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, whose figures the UN considers reliable.
During the ongoing first phase of a US-brokered ceasefire deal, Israel freed 250 Palestinian prisoners in its jails and 1,718 detainees from Gaza.
Before Lt Goldin’s body was returned, Israel had also handed over the bodies of 300 Palestinians in exchange for the bodies of 20 Israeli hostages returned by Hamas, along with those of three foreign hostages – one of them Thai, one Nepalese and one Tanzanian.
The parties also agreed to an increase of aid to the Gaza Strip, a partial withdrawal of Israeli forces, and a halt to fighting, although violence has flared up as both sides accused one another of breaching the deal.
On Saturday in Gaza, two Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire. The Israeli military said two people had crossed the yellow line marking the line of Israeli control and posed an “immediate threat”.
