TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — The announcement Monday that Hamas has released the body of another hostage gave hope to 13 families and an Israeli public desperate for the remains of their loved ones to return from Gaza.
Then came news from Israeli officials that the militant group had only partially returned remains of a hostage recovered by Israeli troops nearly two years ago. That brought fresh grief to the families of the hostages, whose bodies still lie somewhere in the devastated Palestinian territory.
More than two weeks after a ceasefire began in the Israel-Hamas war, families are enduring a terrifying waiting game to bring their loved ones to rest. The slow return of remains is the most immediate threat to the ceasefire that began on October 10, and it is a sensitive issue for the Israeli public, which attaches religious and cultural significance to the recovery of bodies for burial in Israel.
Orna Neutra, the mother of an Israeli-American soldier killed in the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, and whose body was confiscated by Hamas, said her family longs for closure on her son Omer’s homecoming.
“This is my son,” she said in Tel Aviv on Monday. “We need that concreteness. We visited some of the families who got their loved ones back and they shared with us some of the intimacy of receiving the body, actually seeing it and what it felt like for them. And as Omer’s mother, I can say I really need that.”
The U.S.-brokered ceasefire came under pressure on Tuesday as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered fresh attacks in Gaza after the body parts were returned and an Israeli official said that the country’s forces had been fired on in southern Gaza.
Hamas responded that it would delay the handover of another hostage’s body.
As part of the ceasefire, Hamas released 20 live hostages earlier this month in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees. The militants also released the remains of 15 hostages.
Hamas says it has not been able to reach all the remains because they are buried under the rubble of Israel’s two-year offensive in Gaza. Israel accused the militants of delays and threatened to resume military operations or withhold humanitarian aid if all remains were not returned.
This week, Hamas said it had expanded its search for hostage bodies to fresh areas in the Gaza Strip. Egypt has also deployed a team of experts and weighty equipment to lend a hand recover the bodies.
Meanwhile, Palestinian families in Gaza are also struggling to identify bodies returned by Israel as part of the ceasefire. Thousands of Palestinians from Gaza are still missing, possibly buried under the rubble or in Israeli hands.
The family believed their son was alive for 14 months
Omer Neutra, 21, was born and raised on Long Island, New York, and moved to Israel to volunteer in the military. He was serving as an officer on the Gaza border and was kidnapped with the rest of his tank crew. He and two others were killed. One soldier survived and was released after two years in captivity.
Neutra’s parents made 40 trips to Washington to advocate for their son, appearing regularly at protests across the United States and Israel and giving a speech at the Republican National Convention last year. More than a year after the October 7 attack, they believed Omer was still alive. After 14 months, they received word from the military that intelligence indicated Omer was killed in the 2023 attack.
“It’s not based on forensic evidence. It’s based on intelligence, and it’s very hard to reconcile that,” Omer’s mother said.
As Omer’s father, Ronen Neutra, watched the return of the 20 living hostages, he remembered the Israeli saying, “Cry with one eye and smile with the other.” On the one hand, it was “a miracle” that all the living hostages were released in a single day, Ronen said. But the family also knew that there would be no content reunion for them.
Orna Neutra said the torturous pace at which the bodies were being returned was a fresh kind of torture.
“They long for that closure,” she said. “But we know it will also cause sadness that this will be withheld in two years of struggle.”
The return of bodies is indispensable to mourning
Hostage families who have received the remains of their relatives, Dr. Einat Yehene, the head of rehabilitation at the Hostages Families Forum, encourages people to spend time with the body and even touch it.
“Some recently came back with clothes. Some were just bones. Some were just remains, fragments. This is very devastating,” Yehene said.
Returning the bodies is indispensable to providing relief from “disturbed bereavement,” a unique type of loss in which families are frozen in grief and surrounded by questions.
“Parents are burying someone they haven’t seen in two years,” Yehene said. Being close to the bodies gives “this feeling of concreteness” and the physical proximity offers a chance to say goodbye, she said.
Palestinian families in Gaza are experiencing similar worries as they try to identify the remains of bodies returned by Israel.
Under the ceasefire agreement, Israel agreed to return 15 dead Palestinians for every body of a dead hostage, but Israel does not identify the bodies and does not allow DNA testing material into the Gaza Strip.
Gaza Health Ministry officials said many of the bodies appeared to be fighters or others killed during the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, and in the following days. According to the ministry, which is part of the Hamas-led government, Israel has released the bodies of 195 Palestinians, but only 75 have been identified.
Judaism and Islam demand immediate burial
In Judaism and Islam, tradition calls for burial immediately after death. Among Jews, this custom can be traced back to a line in Deuteronomy that instructs their followers not to leave a body outside overnight, but to bury it that same day.
Israel is still fighting to recover the remains of Eli Cohen, a spy killed in Syria in 1965, and Ron Arad, an Israeli airman who has been missing since his plane was shot down over Lebanon in 1986. Both are well-known names in Israel. One of the 13 waiting families is that of Hadar Goldin, who was killed during a war between Israel and Hamas in 2014. His family has protested weekly against the return of his body for the past eleven years.
“The idea of respecting the dead is an essential part of the Jewish life cycle,” explained Sharon Laufer, who has volunteered for decades as part of Jewish burial societies, the Hevre Kadisha. She is also a reserve soldier in a special unit that identifies dead soldiers and prepares them for their burial.
“The reason we require burial is because the soul leaves the body and floats nearby, so the entirety of the person continues to exist until burial,” she said. “Unless the body is placed in the earth, the soul is not complete.”
Ronen Neutra repeats again and again: “A deceased hostage is still a hostage.”
“It’s part of our culture that we leave no one behind,” he said, referring to Israel’s tight-knit society where military service is mandatory. “They leave no living people behind, and we leave no remains. We bring them all back and pay our respects.”
