This Saturday, the Israeli army announced that it had discovered the body of a hostage in Khan Yunis, in the south of the Gaza Strip, during the night, believed to have been killed in captivity.
Elad Katzir, who was 47 years old when he was kidnapped on October 7 from Kibbutz Nir Oz, “was allegedly killed in captivity by the Islamic Jihad terrorist organization,” the army and internal security service Shin Bet said in a joint statement.
His mother, also taken hostage at the same time, was released on November 24 as part of the only truce in six months between Israel and the radical Palestinian movement Hamas, and his father was killed on the day of the attack by the Islamist movement, Palestine, early October 2023.
Elad Katzir’s body was repatriated to Israel, where it was officially identified, the army said, expressing its “deepest condolences to the family.”
“Our goal is to find and return the hostages home,” the statement said.
The hostage’s sister, in a post on the social network Facebook, complained that Elad Katizir could have been released alive “if an agreement on the hostages had been reached in time.”
“Our leaders are cowardly and driven by political considerations. That is why an agreement has not yet been reached,” emphasized Karmit Palti Katsir.
The deadliest war between Israel and Hamas, which began on October 7, 2023, ends on Sunday after six months with no end in sight, turning the Gaza Strip into a synonym for devastation and disaster.
Despite a brief, week-long truce in November that resulted in the release of some 100 hostages in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners, successive negotiations have failed and the conflict continues to claim lives.
The conflict was triggered on October 7, 2023 by an unprecedented attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement on Israeli territory, which forced Israel to retaliate by promising that it would only end its military offensive after the “destruction” of Hamas.