Israel launches ‘large scale operation’ to locate last hostage in Gaza

Is­rael said Sun­day its mil­i­tary was con­duct­ing a “large-scale op­er­a­tion” to lo­cate the last hostage in Gaza, as Wash­ing­ton and oth­er me­di­a­tors pres­sure Is­rael and Hamas to move in­to the next phase of their cease­fire.

The state­ment came as Is­rael’s Cab­i­net met to dis­cuss the pos­si­bil­i­ty of open­ing Gaza’s key Rafah bor­der cross­ing with Egypt, and a day af­ter top U.S. en­voys met with Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu about next steps.

The re­turn of the re­main­ing hostage, Ran Gvili, has been wide­ly seen as re­mov­ing the re­main­ing ob­sta­cle to mov­ing ahead with open­ing the Rafah cross­ing, which would sig­nal the cease­fire’s sec­ond phase.

The re­turn of all re­main­ing hostages, alive or dead, has been a cen­tral part of the first phase of the cease­fire that took ef­fect on Oct. 10. Be­fore Sun­day, the pre­vi­ous hostage was re­cov­ered in ear­ly De­cem­ber.

While Is­rael has car­ried out search ef­forts be­fore for Gvili, more de­tail than usu­al was re­leased about this one. Is­rael’s mil­i­tary said it was search­ing a ceme­tery in north­ern Gaza near the Yel­low Line, which marks off Is­raeli-con­trolled parts of the ter­ri­to­ry.

Sep­a­rate­ly, an Is­raeli mil­i­tary of­fi­cial said Gvili may have been buried in the Shu­jaiyya–Daraj Tuffah area, and that rab­bis and den­tal ex­perts were on the ground with spe­cial­ized search teams. The of­fi­cial spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty be­cause they were dis­cussing an op­er­a­tion still un­der way.

Gvili’s fam­i­ly has urged Ne­tanyahu’s gov­ern­ment not to en­ter the cease­fire’s sec­ond phase un­til his re­mains are re­turned.

But pres­sure has been build­ing, and the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion has al­ready de­clared in re­cent days that the sec­ond phase is un­der way.

Is­rael has re­peat­ed­ly ac­cused Hamas of drag­ging its feet in the re­cov­ery of the fi­nal hostage. Hamas in a state­ment Sun­day said it had pro­vid­ed all the in­for­ma­tion it had about Gvili’s re­mains, and ac­cused Is­rael of ob­struct­ing ef­forts to search for them in ar­eas of Gaza un­der Is­raeli mil­i­tary con­trol.