Israeli troops recovered the bodies of two hostages in a raid in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis on Wednesday night.
Gadi Haggai (72) and Judy Weinstein-Haggai (70), a married couple from kibbutz Nir Oz who held duel US citizenship, were taking an early-morning walk near their home on the morning of October 7th, 2023, when Hamas militants crossed the border into Israel and killed about 1,200 people and abducted 251, according to Israeli tallies. Their deaths were confirmed by the military in December of that year.
The Israeli military said the raid was carried out after information was obtained during the interrogation of Palestinian prisoners.
The hostages’ bodies had been held by a small militant group called the Palestinian Mujahedeen Battalions that was also responsible for the abduction and murder of Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, Ariel and Kfir, from the same kibbutz.
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“We welcome the closure and their return for proper burial at home in Israel. Our hearts will not be whole until all of the hostages return,” said a statement issued by the Haggai family.
Prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu said the government would not rest until all the hostages were returned home.
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Fifty-six hostages – including 12 from Nir Oz – are still being held captive by Hamas. Twenty of them are believed to be alive.
Nir Oz was devastated in the Hamas attack, with one in four members of the small community either killed or taken hostage.
Jonathan Dekel-Chen, a member of Nir Oz and father of former hostage Sagui Dekel-Chen, who was returned during the ceasefire in February, said the return of two more bodies merely reinforces the urgency of getting all the hostages home as soon as possible, but he was critical of the government.
“The vast majority of Israelis, myself included, believe that the government has never done what it should be doing to get all the hostages home and it has been selling for far too long this fantasy that military pressure on its own can bring the hostages home. There is absolutely no question that the government has made its choice, at least to date, to prefer continued warfare for its own political reasons over the safety of the hostages”
Mr Dekel-Chen described the residents of Nir Oz as “refugees in their own country” because there is still no kibbutz to return to after the destruction of October 7th.
“There’s really almost no buildings that were not destroyed or rendered uninhabitable and, in any case, a very large number of the surviving community have already made it clear that they cannot return to live in Nir Oz because of the trauma that they and their children underwent on that hellish day,” he said.
