Navy divers plumb reservoirs for missing soldier Guy Hever
20-year-old sergeant walked off his base in 1997; his family believes he is being held in Syria
Israel Navy divers have been searching reservoirs in the Golan Heights for the remains of IDF soldier Guy Hever, who went missing from his artillery base in northern Israel 18 years ago.
According to the Ynet news website, the divers were searching lakes near the site where Hever was last seen in August 1997. Hever’s family has been updated on the progress of the search, the report said.
Last December, Israel resumed efforts to solve the mysterious disappearance of the soldier. The searches were concentrated in two minefields adjacent to where Hever was deployed, near Had Nes, Channel 2 reported. As part of the efforts, the army torched the fields while taking photos from above, to look for irregularities in the blasts.
The Israeli forces are hoping to locate Hever’s rifle, which would not have biodegraded or been consumed by animals, and which has never been found. In December 2013, the army announced it would resume the search shortly.
In August 1997, Hever, a sergeant, left his post on the base carrying only his rifle. The base, Camp Thunder, was less than 23 kilometers (14 miles) from the Syrian border.
No trace of Hever has ever been found, and the case remains one of Israel’s most confounding mysteries.
Tireless searches by volunteer teams, soldiers, policemen, trained dogs, aircraft, and robots inserted into mined areas have all come up empty.
The military initially resisted officially declaring Hever missing, and although he is now considered a missing soldier — and a reward has been offered for information on his fate — officials still seem reticent about the case.
Some surmise that the 20-year-old was kidnapped and spirited into Syria, where he is currently being held. His family now hopes that, as a brutal civil war ravages Syria, and with the flow of defectors out of the country, new information might come to light.
“This is harder than grief. It’s something that is not resolved,” his mother, Rina Hever, told The Times of Israel in 2012. “I am sure he’s alive, without a shadow of a doubt.”
It later emerged that Hever was slated to face a minor disciplinary hearing for missing a social event of his unit — the latest in a string of infractions.
Unit commanders assumed that Hever, as young soldiers occasionally do, went AWOL as an act of protest, and headed home to his family.
With time, clues came trickling in. A psychologist living near the base said she had seen Hever heading toward Syria hours after he went missing.
A birdwatcher later reported seeing a uniformed person on the border that day.
In February 2007, a previously unknown and possibly fictional organization, the Resistance Committees for the Liberation of the Golan Heights, released a statement saying it would free an Israeli soldier captured on the Golan Heights — seemingly a reference to Hever — in return for Golan Druze prisoners in Israeli jails. Nothing came of the statement, and it remains unclear if the Resistance Committees even exist.
The Times of Israel Community.