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Israel, today, laid to rest the last hostage from Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned at the funeral that the country’s enemies would pay a heavy price for any future aggression.
Netanyahu’s threat came as Hamas told AFP it was prepared to carry out a full transfer of governance in Gaza to a 15-member Palestinian technocratic committee established under a US-backed ceasefire plan.
Hundreds of tearful mourners packed a stadium in southern Israel on Wednesday for the funeral of Ran Gvili, the last Gaza hostage whose burial marked the end of a painful national saga triggered by Hamas’s 2023 attack.
Israeli forces on Monday brought home the remains of Gvili, who was killed in action and whose body Palestinian militants took into Gaza during their attack.
A large banner bearing Gvili’s portrait hung inside a stadium in Meitar, the hometown of the 24-year-old police officer, where crowds gathered for his funeral before he was laid to rest.
In front of the sombre crowd, which included tearful family members, Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog, Gvili’s coffin lay draped in an Israeli flag.
“I hoped you would come back on your own two feet, and that gave me strength,” said his mother Talik Gvili in her eulogy, describing her son as “the first to leave, last to return”.
“For two years and four months, we talked about you constantly, and you became everyone’s child,” she added.
“Rani, you are with me all the time.”
Herzog hailed the return of his remains but said he could only regret not having known Gvili while he was alive.
“Gvili family, I ask you, as president, for forgiveness that we were not there for him… an entire nation mourns with you today,” he said during the ceremony.
An officer in the elite Yassam unit, Gvili was on medical leave ahead of shoulder surgery when Hamas launched its deadly attack in southern Israel, but grabbed his gun and raced towards the area.
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Of the 251 hostages taken by militants on that day, Gvili’s were the last remains held in the Palestinian territory.
“Know this, you cowards: Rani and the martyrs give us the strength to erase you from the world, to erase evil, to wipe out the seed of Hamas and (Islamic) Jihad,” Talik Gvili told the crowd of mourners, referring to the two Palestinian militant groups.
