Saturday night rallies at Hostages Square to end, says family of slain hostage Ran Gvili; pre-Sabbath gatherings instead

The family of Ran Gvili, one of the two remaining deceased hostages held in Gaza, says that the weekly Saturday night rallies that have been held for two years at Hostages Square will end, as they pivot to pre-Sabbath gatherings held on Friday afternoons at the Tel Aviv plaza.

With the release of the body of Dror Or last week, the two remaining slain hostages whose bodies are held in Gaza are Ran Gvili and Thai worker Sudthisak Rinthalak, whose family is in Thailand.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum, the ad-hoc organization that has supported the hostages’ families for the last two years, told The Times of Israel last week that it will be greatly narrowing its activities now that there are only two families left to support and far fewer donations to support them.

The Gvili family belongs to both that forum as well as the right-wing Tikvah Forum, whose smaller number of hostages’ families advocated military pressure in Gaza rather than ceasefire deals.

The Gvilis say they are exhausted from waiting but won’t be worn down in the struggle for their son’s return.

“The time will come for a thanksgiving rally, a closing rally, and a moment to thank the people of Israel,” says the family. “Please do not take down the yellow flags; do not remove Rani’s photos from the streets. The struggle is not over — it is only changing its form.”

The family invites supporters to join them this Friday at Hostages Square for the Kabbalat Shabbat service, to hear about their son and to welcome the Sabbath.

Gvili, a member of the police’s Yasam counter-terror unit, rushed to the frontlines the morning of October 7, 2023, heading to besieged Kibbutz Alumim. He fell in battle during the Hamas-led attack, and terrorists abducted his body into Gaza.

The family noted that it has been 787 days that Gvili has been held in Gaza, and that Israel must not move to the second stage of the peace deal for Gaza as long as even one hostage remains in the Strip.

“We wish to remind the mediators, led by the Prime Minister of Qatar, that the essence of the agreement is the return of the hostages,” say the Gvilis. “The Hamas terror organization has violated the agreement from the outset. Qatar, Hamas’s partner in the October 7 massacre, should not be searching for excuses to back away from Hamas’s obligation to return the last of the hostages, nor assist the organization in violating the agreement. Rani and Sudthisak are not bargaining chips, and we cannot abandon them — they must come home.”