Urgent warning: Deceased hostage bodies may become unrecoverable in Gaza

A medical report released Tuesday by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum has raised a dire warning about the status of deceased hostages still held in Gaza. The report cautions that the bodies of the 35 confirmed dead hostages may soon become unrecoverable due to worsening conditions and a deepening intelligence gap, potentially preventing their return for burial.

According to the report, two primary risk factors endanger the recovery of these remains. The first is the loss of critical information, the possibility that knowledge about the deceased hostages’ locations resides only with a limited number of individuals within Hamas or affiliated groups. Should those individuals be killed or vanish amid ongoing fighting, the report notes, there may be no documented trace left to guide recovery missions. “As time passes, the intelligence gap deepens, and the possibility of obtaining direct, reliable information to guide recovery efforts diminishes,” the report states.

The second threat involves environmental degradation of the remains. Gaza's extreme climate, marked by intense heat, flooding, and infrastructure collapse, poses serious challenges to preserving the integrity of bodies. These conditions not only hinder the ability to identify remains but also compromise future investigations into the circumstances of death.

On Israel’s Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terrorism, the Forum emphasized that the urgency to retrieve the bodies is not only a personal or family concern, but a national imperative. “The passage of time erodes evidence, obliterates findings, and severely diminishes the chance of recovery,” the report reads. “This also affects the ability to facilitate personal and national healing.”

Prof. Hagai Levine, Head of the Health Team at the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, underscored the gravity of the situation:

“There is a real danger to the deceased hostages, one that could impair the ability to return them for proper burial. The dignified return of the fallen hostages for burial, alongside the return of the living for rehabilitation, is a fundamental condition for healing the personal, social, and national wound."

He added, “It is a moral and national obligation of the State of Israel toward its citizens, part of the unwritten covenant upon which Israeli society rests. Without the return of the deceased hostages and in the absence of certainty, the families become the living-dead, and the fallen remain the dead-alive. This wound undermines the very trust upon which the social fabric relies.”

The Forum calls for immediate action to recover all 59 hostages, living and deceased, insisting that the fate of the dead is inseparably linked to the nation’s collective healing and moral responsibility.