'We will finish Hamas if they don't give us Rani,' says mother of last Israeli hostage

4 hours ago 1

Now the other hostages are home, the living and the dead, there is just one face whose image you will see across Israel, alongside the national flag and the ubiquitous yellow ribbon, symbol of solidarity with the hostages.

It is of a robust young police officer, sometimes in uniform, sometimes on his motorbike - Master Sergeant Ran "Rani" Gvili, 24 years old on 7 October, his body still somewhere in Gaza.

"Everyone knows Rani now, because he's the last person, the last hostage," his parents, Talik and Itzik Gvili, tell me in their home in Meitar. "He came to save Israel, so Israel must save him."

Progression into phase two of the ceasefire hinges on the return of his body. Hamas says it does not know where it is, that the scale of killing as a result of Israel's bombardment makes tracing his original captors and those who might know the location of his body extremely difficult.

The hunt is ongoing, complicated by recent storms. Footage from early December of a search convoy accompanied by the International Red Cross, picking its way through a wasteland of rubble and destruction, testifies to the potential problems.

"Hamas is a monster. He knows exactly where my son is. And we will finish Hamas if they don't give us Rani," says his mother, Talik.

"The only cards they have, it's Rani. And now they think they can play with these cards because it's very valuable."

There is a bleak precedent. The body of 23-year-old IDF soldier Hadar Goldin, killed in Gaza in 2014, was only returned to Israel last month after an 11-year wait.

But if Ran's body is indeed Hamas's final trump card, then the pressure this time, with US President Donald Trump heavily invested in the success of the peace plan, is that bit more intense.

"We'll get him out," Benjamin Netanyahu said at a news conference with the German chancellor earlier this month. He is due to meet Mr Trump at the White House on 29 December to discuss the ceasefire's next phase.

The return of Ran's body is the first hurdle. Phase two is then meant to see Hamas disarmed, an International Stabilisation Force in place in the Gaza Strip and the beginnings at least of Palestinian-led governance.

With Hamas refusing to do much more than potentially store or freeze its weapons and international partners reluctant to commit troops, which might be forced to take on Hamas, the complications are legion.

Mr Trump is expected to have stern words for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, too, after Israel assassinated top Hamas commander Raed Saad in an airstrike last Saturday. The US president has said he is looking into whether it constitutes a breach of the ceasefire.

Hamas accuses Israel of numerous violations, with around 400 killed since it went into effect on 10 October, the Rafah crossing still shut and insufficient aid coming into the Strip. Israel says it killed Saad in retaliation for an attack on IDF forces a day earlier.

Ran was on sick leave with a broken shoulder the morning of 7 October, recovering from an accident on his motorbike.

"How do you think you can go with a broken shoulder?" his father, Itzik, had asked him, but he says he had refused to be put off. "You cannot stop him - he's a very, very, strong person, physically and emotionally."

Ran was shot in the leg in a firefight with Hamas outside Kibbutz Alumim and taken from there into Gaza.

Residents of the kibbutz call him the "shield of Alumim" and credit him and his team with protecting them from the kind of casualties suffered at the neighbouring kibbutzim, though Alumim was by no means left unscathed.

This poster describes Ran Gvili as the 'Shield of Alumim', as the kibbutz credited him and his team with protecting them

Twenty-two agricultural workers from Nepal and Thailand were murdered by Hamas militants who broke into the kibbutz from the west, with two more foreign workers taken hostage into Gaza. In total, 55 people were killed around the kibbutz, many of whom, like Ran, had come to see how they could help.

Alumim resident Sarah-Jane Landsman says she understands Ran's family want closure

"It's an extremely difficult situation, the feeling that once again Hamas has hold of a body which people might say doesn't matter, but a body is so critical and vital to the family. It's closure. If you don't get your loved one's body back, you have no closure," says Alumim resident Sarah-Jane Landsman.

The IDF told Ran's parents they doubted he would have survived his injuries without medical help, and they did not believe he had received any treatment.

"They think he did not survive, but no one knows," his mother says. "We want a little bit of hope."

"A miracle," his father adds. "This Hanukkah miracle."

Read Entire Article