MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Israel says it has recovered the last remaining body of a hostage held in Gaza from the Hamas-led attacks of October 2023 that triggered the devastating Gaza war. The recovery is a major breakthrough in moving a three-month ceasefire in Gaza into its next phase, which is meant to include the demilitarization of Hamas and the deployment of an international stabilization force in the Palestinian territory. NPR's Daniel Estrin is with us now from Jerusalem to tell us more. Hello, Daniel.
DANIEL ESTRIN, BYLINE: Hi, Michel.
MARTIN: So, Daniel, over the weekend, Israel launched this major military operation in Gaza to recover this last hostage body. So who was he, and where were his remains found?
ESTRIN: He was Ran Gvili. He was a 24-year-old Special Forces policeman, and Israel says that he was killed while fighting Hamas militants in the very first hours of the October 7 attack. And the Israeli military says that it launched a major search operation for his remains just yesterday morning on Sunday in a cemetery in Northern Gaza, which is in the roughly half of Gaza that Israeli forces are currently occupying. Israeli media are reporting that soldiers exhumed about 250 bodies of Palestinians in that cemetery and that his body was found in a mass grave and that his remains were identified based on his dental records. He was one of the first hostages to be taken to Gaza. He was killed in Israel. His body was taken to Gaza along with 251 other hostages, both living and dead, who were taken to Gaza that day, and now his body is the very last to be returned.
MARTIN: It's a - this is a big moment. I mean, how are Israelis taking all this in?
ESTRIN: Well, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, at the parliament, recited a Jewish blessing of gratitude for reaching this moment. He called the deceased hostage a hero. And Israelis we've been speaking to have been describing mixed emotions and mostly a sense of relief. This is one man we spoke to, David Harshoshan (ph).
DAVID HARSHOSHAN: It's like a closure - you know, closure for all the people of Israel with what's happened. We're waiting so, so many long times that it's happened. And now that it's happened, it's very - it's make us glad and also very sad.
ESTRIN: You know, the Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, posted a video of himself taking off a yellow ribbon badge from his lapel. This is something that many Israelis have worn for the past two plus years. It was the symbol of the hostages. So it's a moment of closure for Israelis. In Gaza, you know, there are still lethal Israeli attacks in Gaza regularly, and Hamas said that this is a moment to hold Israel to its commitment to advance to the next stage of the ceasefire.
MARTIN: And Israel had been reluctant to move on to that next stage of the ceasefire brokered by President Trump until the last of the hostages were returned. Does this mean that the ceasefire now moves into its next phase?
ESTRIN: Yes, that's what all the sides are promising, including Israel and the U.S. Israel has already committed to allowing Gaza's border to be open again to allow Palestinians to leave and enter through Egypt. So that would be a major step that we could see as early as this week. But there are still major challenges, Michel. Netanyahu, today, said that the next stage of the ceasefire is not the reconstruction of Gaza - it's demilitarization. Israel is demanding Hamas give up all of its weapons before any Israeli troop, any Israeli soldier, withdraws from Gaza. There are still questions about who will be in the international stabilization force the U.S. is promising to send to Gaza. And then, of course, who's going to pay for all the reconstruction?
MARTIN: That is NPR's Daniel Estrin in Jerusalem. Daniel, thank you.
ESTRIN: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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