Final hostage Ran Gvili’s mother says she trusts Israel to bring her son home |
Friday afternoon, following the weekly gathering at Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square calling for the release of hostage Ran Gvili’s body, IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir stopped his car across the square at the entrance to the Kirya, Israel’s military headquarters, to offer his support to Itzik and Talik Gvili.
“There’s room for optimism,” Zamir told the Gvilis.
“We’re relying on you,” said Talik Gvili, Ran’s mother, wearing a T-shirt bearing her son’s image and a yellow piece of tape marked 840, the number of days since Ran was abducted. “We’re truly relying on you.”
Two days later, on Sunday, the Prime Minister’s Office announced that IDF forces were conducting a wide-scale operation to locate Ran’s body at a cemetery in the northern Gaza Strip.
Ran Gvili was taken hostage by terrorists, along with 250 other people of various nationalities, during the Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel on October 7, 2023. Some 1,200 people were murdered in the onslaught, which sparked the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
All other living and dead hostages have been recovered by Israel or returned in exchanges, the last of which helped seal a fragile but ongoing ceasefire brokered by the United States, which the Trump administration hopes to see progress into its second phase in the immediate future.
The failure to recover Ran’s remains, however, is a sticking point, as Israel is reluctant to allow the deal to enter the second stage until the Hamas terror group fulfils its commitment to return all of the hostages.
On Friday, the Gvilis had gathered with former hostages, family members, friends, and supporters for a Kabbalat Shabbat event at the square, calling on the government to avoid moving into phase two of the Gaza deal until Ran was returned home.
“He should have come back in the same deal; it’s just my luck that I’m here,” said former hostage Segev Kalfon, speaking to the crowd of his release in the Gaza deal’s first phase this past October.
The next day, Saturday, following the arrival of Trump envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner for a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss the opening of Gaza’s Rafah border crossing, the Gvilis made a public statement, asking why the pressure to move forward with the ceasefire deal is being directed at Israel rather than at Hamas, which is refusing to return the last remaining hostage, their son.
“Everyone gets it except Witkoff,” said Gvili earlier in the week, after returning from another trip to Florida, this time at the invitation of philanthropist Miriam Adelson, who ferried her on her private jet to the Israeli-American Council’s national summit. “I don’t know what he thinks,........