After recent recovery ops, IDF believes some hostages in Gaza may never be found
Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian is The Times of Israel's military correspondent

Recent complex military operations in the Gaza Strip to recover the bodies of slain hostages have brought the Israel Defense Forces to the understanding that there is a possibility that some of those abducted by Hamas terrorists on October 7 may never be found, The Times of Israel has learned.
The assessment comes as 111 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, now for nearly 300 days, including the bodies of 39 confirmed dead by the IDF. Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of two IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.
Last week, during a raid in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis, the IDF’s 98th Division along with the Shin Bet recovered the bodies of five hostages who were killed and then kidnapped during the onslaught nearly ten months ago.
IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi said following the operation that “we were near these bodies before, we didn’t know how to reach out. Now we knew how to reach out. We brought five [slain hostages], that otherwise it’s not certain we would have ever found them.”
The bodies had been buried inside a tunnel some 20 meters belowground in Khan Younis. According to the military, the bodies were hidden behind one of the walls inside the tunnel, and without the exact information of the location — provided by a detained terrorist — it is unlikely they would have been found.
Another similar discovery occurred in April with the recovery of the body of hostage Elad Katzir, who had been abducted alive and later murdered by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza. His body was buried in the Khan Younis refugee camp in southern Gaza, at a site used by terror operatives.
The military obtained visual intelligence on the site where Katzir was held and sent forces there to search for the body, which was then located and brought back to Israel for burial.
Katzir’s captors, according to IDF assessments, had all been killed by the military and it was unlikely that anyone else knew where he was being held.
Still, the IDF assesses that the likelihood of it obtaining intelligence on the hostages will increase as time passes. But at the same time, the chances of the hostages remaining alive decreases over time.
There is currently a vast amount of intelligence — obtained amid the ground operation in Gaza — that the IDF is deciphering, which may bring leads on the hostages.