\u201cHe went in first, he came out last. He came back,\u201d said an exultant Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, minutes after Gvili\u2019s parents were given the news. \u201cWe promised, and I promised, to bring everyone back, and we brought everyone back\u2026 to the very last one.\u201d<\/p>\n
Unlike Ron Arad<\/a>, the Air Force navigator still officially missing in action four decades after he ejected over Lebanon; unlike Hadar Goldin<\/a>, the Givati Brigade officer killed in a Hamas ambush in 2014, whose body was finally returned to Israel two months ago \u2014 this time, nobody has been left behind.<\/p>\n \t Formally, the recovery of Gvili\u2019s body completes the first phase of US President Donald Trump\u2019s broader peace plan for Gaza, and ushers in the next phases, under which Hamas is supposed to relinquish its weapons, the Strip is to be demilitarized, the IDF is to gradually withdraw, and a new, non-threatening Gaza is to be eventually constructed.<\/p>\n Most imminently, Ali Shaath, the former Palestinian Authority deputy minister appointed to head the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, announced on Thursday that the Rafah Crossing between Gaza and Egypt would open within days in both directions. And Netanyahu, who is deeply wary that any such concession will be abused by the still potent Hamas, reluctantly went along, to the fury of his far-right coalition partners. His office on Sunday night conditioned reopening the crossing on the completion of the search for Gvili\u2019s body \u2014 a condition now successfully met.<\/p>\n Hamas, it should not require stressing, has not wavered from its goal of eliminating Israel. Rather, it evidently concluded that releasing, first, all 20 remaining living hostages and now, finally, the last of the 28 deceased hostages, has paved the best path to avoiding ongoing, potentially intensified US-backed Israeli military pressure. Still controlling almost half of Gaza, it believes it is creating conditions under which it will be able to fudge the issue of what exactly becomes of its arms, rebuild its personnel and resources, continue to benefit from the support of a world full of Israel-haters and fools, await more conducive US leadership, and resume its \u201cresistance\u201d to the Jewish state.<\/p>\n Israel had two clear goals for a war it had no choice but to fight against Gaza\u2019s terrorist government in the terrible aftermath of October 7: destroy Hamas, and get all the hostages back.<\/p>\n The first goal is not completed; the war in its current form is over, but Hamas is not destroyed.<\/p>\n But the second, mercifully, has now been accomplished. Israel\u2019s political and military leadership has cleared a critical hurdle in rebuilding its relationship with the citizenry it so catastrophically failed to protect 843 days ago. The hostages have been returned. To the very last one.<\/p>\n
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\n\t\tIDF troops stand by the body of Master Sgt. Ran Gvili, after it was located at a cemetery in eastern Gaza City, on January 26. 2026. (Courtesy)<\/p>\n
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