'We deserve to end this chapter': Brother's plea as hostage's body remains in Gaza
Elad Or's agonising wait continues as his brother's remains are among just four hostages' bodies still held in Gaza after Hamas's October 7 attack.
More than two years after Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, Elad Or is still seeking closure as he awaits the return of his brother’s remains from Gaza.
His brother Dror Or is among the last four hostages confirmed dead whose bodies have yet to be handed over to Israel under a US-brokered ceasefire that took effect on October 10.
“We deserve to bring this chapter to an end,” Elad said outside his home in Jerusalem.
Dror was killed on October 7, 2023 during Hamas’s attack, the worst in Israel’s history.
Militants took his body to Gaza, and have kept it there ever since. Under the terms of the truce, Hamas has freed all living 20 hostages in exchange for around 2000 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.
Militants have also returned the remains of 24 of 28 deceased hostages. Four, including Dror Or, remain in Gaza.
‘It’s hard’
For Elad, the wait has grown more painful in recent weeks as he watched other families receive their loves ones — dead or alive.
“The deal is working, and it’s hard to be among the last when almost everyone else has already been freed,” said Elad, 41, who heads a non-profit youth organisation.
Dror, 48, was a cheesemaker from Kibbutz Beeri, the site of one of the deadliest massacres of the October 7 attack.
He was killed along with his wife Yonat, and his body was taken to Gaza to serve as a bargaining chip.
Under the ceasefire deal, each dead Israeli hostage’s body is exchanged for the remains of 15 Palestinians.
Two of the couple’s three children, 16-year-old Noam and 13-year-old Alma, were also seized during the attack but released in the first truce of the war in November 2023.
Upon their release, they learnt of their mother’s death, while their father was still presumed alive at the time.
But in May 2024, the military confirmed his death.
‘Different ending’
Of the 207 hostages taken alive to Gaza, 41 died or were killed in captivity. Most of the 166 survivors were freed during the three ceasefires of the war. Alongside Dror, the bodies of Israelis Meny Goddard and Ran Gvili, and Thai worker, Sudthisak Rinthalak, remain in Gaza.
In recent weeks, funerals for returned hostages have followed one another, some drawing thousands of mourners — among them the ceremony for Colonel Assaf Hamami on November 5 in Tel Aviv.
“I wanted so much for there to be a different ending, a truly happy one, but life has plans of its own,” said his widow Saphir Hamami at the military cemetery.
“And this is probably the best ending I could have dreamt of since October 7.” Among those present to support the family were the parents of Itay Chen, a soldier also killed during the October 7 attack.
Their son’s body was also returned earlier this month, and his family was finally able to lay him to rest.
‘Bring everyone back’
Chen’s mother Hagit Chen said that until all the bodies are back, Israeli authorities should not shift their focus onto any other issue.
“They should bring everyone back,” she said.
“Every soldier and every person in this country knows that if something happens to them, the state will be there for them and for their family.” Meanwhile, the process of identifying the remains continues at the National Center of Forensic Medicine in Tel Aviv.
Chen Kugel, the head of the centre, has identified dozens of hostage bodies. “Some doctors left their posts during the war because it was too hard,” he said
To cope, the man who identified the majority of Hamas’s more than 1200 victims, said he works to stay focused on the job while he is at work.
“When you’re with the body, you don’t think about who the person is — you focus” on the autopsy, Mr Kugel said.
“But when you later open the newspaper or turn on the TV and see who that person was — their dreams, their family, what they loved, their plans — then you feel connected to them, and you realise … that they had a life.”
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