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Israel Receives Body of a Hostage in Gaza That Hamas Claims Is Israeli Soldier Hadar Goldin

Displaced Palestinians walk among heavily damaged buildings in Khan Younis refugee camp, southern Gaza Strip, 08 November 2025. (EPA)
Displaced Palestinians walk among heavily damaged buildings in Khan Younis refugee camp, southern Gaza Strip, 08 November 2025. (EPA)
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Israel Receives Body of a Hostage in Gaza That Hamas Claims Is Israeli Soldier Hadar Goldin

Displaced Palestinians walk among heavily damaged buildings in Khan Younis refugee camp, southern Gaza Strip, 08 November 2025. (EPA)
Displaced Palestinians walk among heavily damaged buildings in Khan Younis refugee camp, southern Gaza Strip, 08 November 2025. (EPA)

Israel on Sunday received the remains of a hostage in Gaza which 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. During the current ceasefire, his remains were the only ones held in Gaza that predated the 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 the remains of Goldin, who has become a national symbol, would be 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 fighters in Gaza. It would also close a painful, 11-year saga for his family. 

The Red Cross transferred the body to the Israeli military within Gaza, where it is being brought to Israel and the national forensic institute in Tel Aviv for identification. Dozens of people gathered along intersections where the police convoy carrying the remains drove from southern Israel to Tel Aviv, holding Israeli flags and paying last respects to what is believed to be a fallen soldier. 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 hanged 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 fighters 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. 

Positive development in the truce  

Since the ceasefire began last month, fighters have released the remains of 23 hostages. As part of the truce deal, the fighters 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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Arab World

Syrian Troop Killings Expose Repeated Attacks, Security Lapses

Syrian army personnel on a military vehicle in Deir Hafer, rural Aleppo, in January 2026. (Reuters)
Syrian army personnel on a military vehicle in Deir Hafer, rural Aleppo, in January 2026. (Reuters)
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Syrian Troop Killings Expose Repeated Attacks, Security Lapses

Syrian army personnel on a military vehicle in Deir Hafer, rural Aleppo, in January 2026. (Reuters)
Syrian army personnel on a military vehicle in Deir Hafer, rural Aleppo, in January 2026. (Reuters)

The recent killing of two Syrian army members near Manbij, east of Aleppo, was not an isolated attack. It was part of a recurring pattern of strikes on government forces, exposing serious administrative and security gaps that groups opposed to Syria’s new administration are using to target its personnel.

Syria’s Ministry of Defense media and communications department said on June 20 that two soldiers from the 76th Division were killed after unknown gunmen attacked them near Manbij.

The soldiers were riding a motorcycle on a road near the city when they came under direct fire.

Since the fall of the Assad regime, Asharq Al-Awsat has tracked many similar attacks on Syrian security and army personnel. Most have occurred as members were heading to or leaving their posts, often on motorcycles or via irregular transport.

Many see the pattern as evidence of weak protection measures and poor organization of personnel rotations.

Rural Aleppo has witnessed several assassinations this year. Among the most prominent were the killing of two Syrian army members in March and another member of the Interior Ministry in April near the town of al-Rai.

Similar incidents have also been reported across most Syrian provinces, including Daraa, Latakia, rural Hama and Homs.

Embarrassing the Syrian state

Demands have grown for personnel to avoid moving alone, wearing military uniforms or using motorcycles in remote areas where the risk is high and support is hard to reach.

Major Khaled al-Abdullah, director of the Syrian interior minister’s office, said the defense and interior ministries had repeatedly issued circulars banning personnel from wearing official uniforms outside working hours and requiring them to follow safety measures suited to Syria’s current conditions.

He said the immediate aim of attacks by groups opposed to the new administration, including Islamic State and remnants of the ousted regime, was to “try to embarrass the Syrian state.”

Abdullah stressed that authorities were working hard to impose security, eliminate armed groups and organizations, and had made significant progress on what he called a difficult path.

But in remarks to Asharq Al-Awsat, he also pointed to “continued internal and external challenges that the Syrian state is working to overcome and whose danger it seeks to end.”

Manbij, the most dangerous route

Abu Mohammed al-Hussein, who oversees a cluster of checkpoints in eastern rural Aleppo, said the movement of personnel had become a problem. He said he had repeatedly asked for buses to transport rotating shift members, especially in rural areas far from the city center.

Hussein said one member of his checkpoint group survived an assassination attempt on the Manbij-al-Bab road in eastern rural Aleppo at the end of March. The incident pushed him to issue special orders regulating how his personnel move.

“A civilian car offered to take one of my men to Aleppo city,” he said. “After they had driven several miles, they claimed there was an emergency and said they had to return. As soon as he got out, the driver’s companion fired several shots at him with a pistol. Two hit his magazine pouch and one pierced his foot. He survived by a miracle.”

He said shift rotations are “decided centrally by sector commanders” and are often carried out at night because service areas are far from where personnel live. He said a ban on carrying weapons and moving through residential areas had also made personnel easier targets.

“With repeated assassination attempts, I issued a decision banning nighttime shift rotations, prohibiting movement in civilian cars or on motorcycles, which have also become easy targets, and limiting transport to road security vehicles,” he added.

Hussein said they were still waiting for approval of a request to allocate a bus to transport security and military checkpoint personnel deployed along the Aleppo-Manbij road.

He described it as “one of the most dangerous land routes,” linking Aleppo to outlying areas and Raqqa province, and passing through an area that remained for years under the control of the ousted regime and the Syrian Democratic Forces.

Ban on keeping weapons

Haider al-Mohammed, a special tasks member, disagreed. He said “transport buses are, in practice, the easy target” and are often attacked, meaning the problem of securing personnel goes beyond transport.

He said decisions that stripped personnel of the means to protect their safety and identity were the direct reason behind the rise in assassinations, alongside the exceptional conditions in the country and the process of “clearing out groups that believe they can create chaos and fear.”

He said among the most important of these decisions were “the ban on wearing face coverings, the ban on keeping registered weapons, and the strict instruction not to carry personal weapons, along with leniency over wearing official uniforms.”

As a result, he said, personnel are exposed, easy targets for these groups, and left without weapons to defend themselves.

On this point, Major Khaled al-Abdullah said Syria’s security and military institutions were working to “implement solutions to facilitate and reduce regular movement in a way that helps end the threat and strengthen the safety of their personnel.”

He said the pattern of attacks “confirms their randomness.” The failure to select specific targets or have prior knowledge of the personnel being targeted, he said, was “an attempt to create chaos and confuse the Syrian state.”

Arab World

Hamas Seeks to Put Gaza on US-Iran Talks Agenda

A Palestinian child weeps next to the body of his brother, killed in an Israeli strike in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, on Wednesday (AFP)
A Palestinian child weeps next to the body of his brother, killed in an Israeli strike in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, on Wednesday (AFP)
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Hamas Seeks to Put Gaza on US-Iran Talks Agenda

A Palestinian child weeps next to the body of his brother, killed in an Israeli strike in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, on Wednesday (AFP)
A Palestinian child weeps next to the body of his brother, killed in an Israeli strike in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, on Wednesday (AFP)

At a time when a purported ceasefire agreement in the Gaza Strip faces continued Israeli breaches and violations, Hamas has moved toward Iran in a step that showed it was counting on a “supportive” position on Gaza by having the issue placed on the agenda of ongoing talks between Washington and Tehran.

The Hamas move came in an announced phone call on Tuesday between Basem Naim, deputy head of the movement’s Arab and Islamic Relations Office, and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.

According to a Hamas statement, Araghchi and Naim “discussed the latest developments in the Iranian-US negotiations and the Palestinian issue, especially as it relates to the Gaza Strip,” with Naim praising “Iran’s positions toward the Palestinian cause and its continued support for Gaza amid the continued Israeli aggression.”

A statement published by Iran’s Tasnim news agency on Wednesday quoted Araghchi as telling Naim that “the Iranian team will raise the Palestinian issue in the ongoing negotiations,” adding that it would also raise “the issue of the occupation’s continued aggression in all international forums.”

The call came amid Iranian-US negotiations that include an understanding on a ceasefire in Lebanon between Hezbollah and Israel.

It was the second Hamas-Iran call in June. On June 4, Araghchi called Khalil Al-Hayya, Hamas’s leader in Gaza and head of its negotiating delegation. The statement at the time, however, did not clearly refer to bringing Gaza into the Iranian-US negotiations.

It only said Hayya had praised the Iranian negotiating team’s position, which stressed the need for a simultaneous halt to the war on all fronts in the region.

Asharq Al-Awsat tried to contact Hamas official Basem Naim, but he did not respond to calls.

“Not a replacement for mediators”

Two senior Hamas sources abroad told Asharq Al-Awsat in separate remarks that the call between Naim and Araghchi came as part of “continued communication with various parties in an attempt to consolidate the ceasefire in Gaza.”

One of them said: “This does not amount to abandoning the negotiations track through the main mediator countries, Egypt, Qatar and Türkiye.”

One source said Naim’s mandate was to communicate with all Arab and Islamic parties as part of a policy of openness to all sides, in a way that serves the interests of the Palestinian people, especially in Gaza, as Israeli violations continue and no party has been able to compel Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to stop its violations in the enclave.

Still, the second source did not conceal that Hamas was “looking for a pressing Iranian role in the current negotiations to place Gaza on their agenda, as was the case in Lebanon, where Iran succeeded through its efforts in reaching a ceasefire,” according to his assessment.

The second source said: “We, Hamas, count on any position that supports us, the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian cause in general. But it is unlikely that such a step will succeed, given the insistence of the United States and Israel on separating the fronts as much as possible, and given the consensus and understanding inside the movement that the Gaza file has for some time been separate during the war.”

“Positive signs from Lebanon create an opening”

The two sources agreed, however, that there had been “a positive development on the Lebanon front” imposed by the Iranian-US negotiations. That has tempted some Hamas leadership circles to try to “use the opportunity to push for placing Gaza on the negotiations agenda, even though they expect their efforts to fail.”

In recent days, Hamas media outlets have intensified a similar narrative, attributed to an unnamed Iranian source, saying the negotiations include consolidating the ceasefire in Gaza.

A third Hamas source in Gaza said the movement had consistently looked for an Iranian position in support of it in the negotiations during the war. But “it is clear that the United States did not allow, and will not allow, that. It considers Gaza a separate front, and there are efforts being made on that front to consolidate the ceasefire.”

The source added: “It can be said clearly that Iran adopted the halt to the war on the Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq fronts on the basis that those fronts entered the war more broadly after the assassination of former Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, while the war in Gaza had started much earlier.”

A fourth source from a Palestinian faction that receives support from Iran said, “The leaders and members of factions linked to Tehran had hoped it would succeed in stopping the war in Gaza.”

“That would have counted heavily in their favor and in favor of the factions, given the inability of mediators and guarantors to compel Israel to abide by the agreement and stop the violations.”

Factional sources had said that “during the factions’ meetings in Cairo, leaders from several sides advised the Hamas leadership not to count on the Iranian negotiations track, and to take more important steps within the framework of a unified Palestinian position to produce a positive response to proposals related to weapons and other issues.”

Hamas’s evolving position, after the latest call between Naim and Araghchi, appears to come amid voices rejecting amendments made by Nickolay Mladenov, the High Representative for Gaza at the Board of Peace.

Some parties inside the movement viewed the amendments as “primarily serving Israel, and not adhering to US President Donald Trump’s plan, under which the ceasefire agreement was signed in October 2025.”

Arab World

Israel Army Says Struck Suspected Hezbollah Fighters in Lebanon ‘Security Zone’

Stray dogs walk past the rubble of flattened homes and businesses, destroyed by the Israeli military, in the southern Lebanese village of Tibnin on June 24, 2026. (AFP)
Stray dogs walk past the rubble of flattened homes and businesses, destroyed by the Israeli military, in the southern Lebanese village of Tibnin on June 24, 2026. (AFP)
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Israel Army Says Struck Suspected Hezbollah Fighters in Lebanon ‘Security Zone’

Stray dogs walk past the rubble of flattened homes and businesses, destroyed by the Israeli military, in the southern Lebanese village of Tibnin on June 24, 2026. (AFP)
Stray dogs walk past the rubble of flattened homes and businesses, destroyed by the Israeli military, in the southern Lebanese village of Tibnin on June 24, 2026. (AFP)

The Israeli military said it carried out an airstrike targeting suspected Hezbollah fighters who crossed into the so-called "security zone" it has created in southern Lebanon, the second such incident it reported within hours on Wednesday.

"A short while ago, a vehicle carrying suspects was identified crossing the security zone in the Ali al-Taher Ridge area, posing a threat to Israeli soldiers," the military said.

"Following the identification, the Israeli Air Force struck the suspects in order to remove the threat," it added, vowing that the military "would not allow Hezbollah" fighters to harm its troops.