Hostage with confirmed identity: the tenth body returned to Israel

Israel confirmed on Saturday the identification of a hostage whose remains were returned, bringing to ten the total number of bodies handed over by the Palestinian movement Hamas.

The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that the remains of Eliyahu Margalit, returned by Hamas on Friday, had been formally identified.

According to a statement from the Israeli army, “the family of the hostage Eliyahu Margalit has been informed that his body was brought back to Israel and his identity confirmed.”

The statement added that Israel “will not compromise and will spare no effort until the return of all hostages, even those deceased.”

Hamas handed over Margalit’s body to the International Committee of the Red Cross on Friday evening, which in turn transferred it to Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip.

The body was then taken to the Tel Aviv Forensic Institute for identification before being returned to the family.

The army reported that Margalit was killed in Kibbutz Nir Oz, southern Israel, during Hamas’s attack on October 7, 2023, which ignited the war in Gaza.

The statement added that Margalit “was seventy-five years old at the time of his death, married, a father of three, and a grandfather. His daughter, Nili Margalit, was also kidnapped but was released as part of a hostage exchange deal in November 2023.”

The Israeli army emphasized that Hamas “remains obligated to fulfill the terms of the agreement and make every effort to return the bodies of all hostages to their families.”

On Friday, Hamas stated that the process of retrieving and returning the bodies of Israeli hostages “could take some time,” as some were buried in tunnels destroyed by Israeli forces and others remained under the rubble of bombed buildings.

The movement reiterated its “commitment to the agreement, its full implementation, and the return of all remaining bodies.”

Under the ceasefire agreement, brokered with the mediation of U.S. President Donald Trump and implemented on October 10, Hamas was required to return all hostages, both alive and deceased, by October 13.

Hamas released twenty living hostages within the deadline but returned only ten of the twenty-eight bodies.

The movement claims it handed over eleven bodies to Israel through the Red Cross, but the Israeli government asserts that one of them did not belong to an Israeli hostage.