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

Hadar Goldin’s family had waged a public campaign for 11 years to bring his remains home (Hostages and Missing Families Forum via AP)

Israel has confirmed it has 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. Mr Goldin’s family have waged a public campaign for 11 years to bring his remains home. 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.

Hadar Goldin’s remains were taken to the national forensic institute in Tel Aviv in Israel (Mahmoud Illean/AP)

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

The return of the remains of Mr Goldin, who has become a national symbol, were a significant development in the US-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 body to the Israeli military within Gaza. It was taken to the national forensic institute in Tel Aviv.

Dozens of people gathered along junctions where the police convoy carried the remains, holding Israeli flags and paying their last respects.

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

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

People awaited the arrival of the coffin (Mahmoud Illean/AP)

Israel recovered the remains of the other soldier, Oron Shaul, earlier this year.

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

Mr Kushner, a top adviser to Mr Trump, was a key architect of Washington’s 20-point ceasefire plan.

The deal that took effect on October 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 post-war Gaza, have not been worked out.

Mr Kushner was helping to lead negotiations to secure safe passage for 150-200 trapped Hamas militants in exchange for surrendering their weapons after the release of Mr Goldin’s remains, according to someone close to the negotiations.

Israeli media, citing anonymous officials, previously reported that Hamas was delaying the release of Mr 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 Mr Netanyahu’s Likud party, told Army Radio that Israel was not negotiating for a deal within a deal.

Hadar is a soldier who went to combat and they abandoned him, and they destroyed his humanitarian rights and ours as well

“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, although they acknowledged that clashes were taking place there.

Mr 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”.

Ms Goldin told The Associated Press earlier this year that returning her son’s body had ethical and religious value and was 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,” Ms Goldin said.

She said that her family often felt alone in their struggle to bring Mr Goldin, a talented artist who had just become engaged, home for burial.

After the October 7 attack, the Goldin family attempted to help hundreds of families of those taken into Gaza. Initially, the Goldins found themselves shunned as advocacy for the hostages surged.

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

Palestinians rush towards trucks carrying aid in central Gaza (Jehad Alshrafi/AP)

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 had now been returned, with 89 identified.

Around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed in the October 7 attack on southern Israel, and 251 people were kidnapped.

On Saturday, Gaza’s health ministry said that the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza had 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.