Inside the High-Stakes Mission to Recover Ran Gvili
After a 48-hour race against time and winter storms, the IDF’s "Operation Brave Heart" has successfully recovered the body of Ran Gvili from a Shuja'iyya cemetery. Found intact in his police uniform, Ran is the final hostage to be returned, officially closing the list of the missing in Gaza.
In a historic achievement that brings a painful closure to the nation, the IDF confirmed today the successful recovery of Master Sgt. Ran Gvili (Hy"d), the final hostage remaining in the Gaza Strip. The operation, conducted with surgical precision and deep emotional weight, concludes a mission nearly two and a half years in the making.
The recovery was the result of a specialized 48-hour mission titled "Operation Brave Heart." Acting on a breakthrough intelligence lead received last week, IDF forces entered a Palestinian cemetery in the Shuja'iyya neighborhood on Saturday morning.
The task was daunting: to find one Israeli hero among hundreds.
According to a report by Mendi Rizel, a military official who participated in the search confirmed that the Shuja'iyya cemetery where Master Sgt. Ran Gvili (Hy"d) was located sat beyond the "Yellow Line," a tactical boundary marking areas that were previously considered too high-risk or inaccessible for deep forensic operations.
The Combat Operation
To secure the site and allow recovery teams to operate safely, the IDF had to forcefully clear the surrounding neighborhood.
Closing the Final Chapter
The recovery in Shuja'iyya solves a mystery that had haunted the intelligence community for over two years. The IDF had previously hesitated to cross the "Yellow Line" for cemetery searches due to the extreme danger to troops, but the breakthrough intelligence received last week made the risk a necessity.
Soldiers meticulously examined approximately 250 bodies within the cemetery. At 1:30 PM today, Ran was located inside a communal grave. Forensic experts performed a "double-verification" process, cross-referencing multiple biological markers to ensure 100% certainty before notifying the family.
The Intelligence Puzzle: Tunnels and Hospital Leads
Military sources reveal that the IDF had been investigating several high-probability hypotheses before the breakthrough:
1. The "Identification Error" Theory: Intelligence suggested Ran might have been buried in the Shuja'iyya cemetery by mistake, confused with local casualties by his captors. This ultimately proved correct.
2. The Tunnel Search: Elite Yahalom units drilled into a tunnel roughly one kilometer from the cemetery. Despite deep subterranean scans, the search yielded no results.
3. The Shifa Lead: Earlier intelligence pointed to sites near Shifa Hospital or northern Gaza, but these remained tactically inaccessible at the time.
"Returning as He Left"
In a detail that moved the entire defense establishment, Police Commissioner RND Dan Levi informed the Guili family that Ran was found intact and still wearing his Yasam police uniform. Despite the passage of 843 days, he was returned in the same uniform he donned on the morning of October 7 to defend the South.
Closing the Circle
As the mission concluded, soldiers on the ground were seen standing shoulder-to-shoulder, singing in a chillingly moving moment of unity before beginning the process of restoring the cemetery grounds and withdrawing.
The Hostage Directorate issued a final, historic statement: "The circle is closed. All 255 hostages have been returned from Gaza to Israel."