Israel announced Sunday that it had repatriated, during a “special operation” carried out “in the heart of Syria”, the body of one of its soldiers killed in Lebanon in 1982.
“During a special operation carried out by (the army) and the Mossad (the external intelligence services), the body of Sergeant Zvika Feldman was located in the heart of Syria and repatriated to Israel,” the army and the Mossad said in a statement.
ZVI – ZVIKA, from his nickname – Feldman died during the battle of Sultan Yacoub who had brought the Israeli and Syrian armies on June 10 and 11, 1982 in the Bekaa region, located in eastern Lebanon along the border with Syria.
His body had not been found.
“The return (of the remains) of Sergeant Feldman was made possible thanks to a complex and clandestine operation, made possible by precise information and the use of operational capacities showing ingenuity and courage,” added the army and the Mossad.
Genetic tests
No information has been provided on the date of this operation or on the specific location of the discovery of the body.
As soon as Damascus was falling in Damas from Bashar al-Assad on December 8 after more than 13 years of civil war, Israel sent troops to a gashed buffer area in the Golan, in southwest Syria, at the edge of the part of this occupied set and then annexed by Israel in 1981.
ZVI Feldman was formally identified thanks to genetic tests, the army said.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went to the family’s home to directly announce to his relatives the return of the soldier’s body.
In total, three Israeli soldiers had been missing after the Battle Sultan Yacoub.
The body of Zachary Baumel, commander of Char of the 362nd armored battalion, had been brought back to Israel in April 2019. A soldier, Yehouda Katz, still lacks the call
“Moral duty”
“We will not stop acting” to bring his body, said Netanyahu in a statement from his services.
“For many years, I have authorized many secret operations to find the missing of Sultan Yacoub,” he added.
After the return of Zvi Feldman, the unity of the army which takes care of the missing research counts three soldiers whose fate remains unknown: in addition to Yehouda Katz, his comrade of Sultan Yacoub, the aviator Ron Arad, captured during a mission in Lebanon in 1986, and Guy Hever, disappeared on the Golan in 1997.
The unit is looking for dozens of other officially dead soldiers, including one killed in 2014 in Gaza.
“The return of all missing and hostages, living and dead (…) is our moral and national duty,” said Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz in a statement.
This announcement occurs while 58 of the 251 hostages removed on Israeli soil during the attack on the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on October 7, 2023 are still retained captive in the Gaza Strip.
“We cannot as a company normalizing a situation where families must wait more than 40 years to find their loved ones,” denounced the hostage families forum, in a press release.
