‘Now we can really stop the clock,’ says sister of last hostage returned from Gaza

Shira Gvili, the sister of Master Sgt. Ran Gvili – the last hostage in Gaza, whose body was returned to Israel yesterday – expresses a bittersweet sense of relief as crowds gathered in Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square for a ceremony to stop the countdown clock that for 843 days and 12 hours marked the time hostages remained in Hamas captivity.

“On October 7, our clock stopped,” says Gvili. “Now we can really stop the clock.”

“Tomorrow, we are laying Rani to his eternal rest,” she says. “For the last 844 days, I felt every minute… the world kept moving, but I wanted it to stop with us.”

“Now, I can say that Rani is here with us – Rani is home,” she tells the crowd to the sound of applause.

Gvili goes on to thank those in attendance and the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, which she says “embraced us in a warm hug.”

Former hostage Segev Kalfon also addresses the crowd, saying that the first time he saw the countdown clock was from images shown to him while he was still in Hamas captivity.

“It was a clock that measured the hostages’ time not only in days, but also in minutes and seconds,” he says. “That’s exactly how we felt – every minute was an eternity, every second could have been our last.”

Kalfon adds that images of supporters in Hostages Square gave him and the other hostages hope while in captivity.

“The stopping of this clock is a significant moment, but it’s not the end – it symbolizes the end of one stage,” he emphasizes, saying that now the grieving families of slain hostages must embark on their mourning process.