Israel receives body of a hostage in Gaza that Hamas claims is Israeli soldier Hadar Goldin

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TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israel on Sunday received the remains of a hostage in Gaza that Hamas says is the body of an Israeli soldier who was killed in 2014 and has been held in Gaza for the past 11 years. His remains were the only ones held in Gaza since before the latest war between Israel and Hamas.

Hamas said that it found the body of the soldier, Hadar Goldin, in a tunnel in the enclave's southernmost city of Rafah on Saturday. Goldin was killed on Aug. 1, 2014, two hours after a ceasefire took effect ending that year’s war between Israel and Hamas.

The return of his remains would be 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. It would also close a painful, 11-year saga for his family, where Goldin has become a national symbol.

The remains will be transferred to Israel and to the national forensic institute for identification. If the body is identified as Goldin's, there will be four bodies of hostages remaining in Gaza.

At the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said 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.”

Goldin's family spearheaded a very public campaign, along with the family of another soldier whose body was taken in 2014, to bring their sons home for burial. Israel recovered the remains of the other soldier, Oron Shaul, earlier this year.

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

Israeli media, citing anonymous 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 enclave's southernmost city of 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 there are clashes taking place there.

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

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.

Back in 2014, the Israeli military determined, based on evidence found in the tunnel where Goldin’s body was taken — including a blood-soaked shirt and prayer fringes — that he had been killed in the attack. His family held what his mother Leah Goldin now calls a “pseudo-funeral," including Goldin’s shirt and fringes, 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 is an ethical and religious value, 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.

In the dizzying days after the Oct. 7 attack, the Goldin family threw themselves into attempting to help hundreds of families of those who were 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.’”

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Kareem Chehayeb reported from Beirut.

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Find more of AP’s Israel-Hamas coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war