Ombudsman: PM must answer to family of soldier whose body is held by Hamas

State Comptroller Yosef Shapira said Tuesday that he has asked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to promptly respond to claims about efforts to return the remains of an IDF soldier whose body is being held by the Hamas terror group in the Gaza Strip.

Shapira said in a statement that he recently met with the family of Hadar Goldin, an IDF officer who was killed during the 2014 summer conflict in Gaza, and received from them “a detailed document regarding the State of Israel’s handling of the return of Lieutenant Hadar Goldin to Israel.”

Without specifying what points the Goldin family made regarding the matter, Shapria said that he had sent a letter to Netanyahu “to get his response to the claims of the Goldin family.”

After receiving the prime minister’s input, Shapira, who is state ombudsman, will decide how his office will deal with the matter, the statement said.

Shapira noted that had asked Netanyahu for a “prompt” response to the letter, a copy of which he also sent to Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman.

The Goldin family have in the past campaigned to prevent authorities from returning the bodies of Palestinians killed by the IDF to their families as a way to pressure Hamas to give up the soldier’s remains and those of another servicemen held in Gaza.

In February, Goldin’s mother, Leah penned an open letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, government ministers, and Knesset lawmakers, in which she accused the government of “abandoning” her son.

On August 1, 2014, the Givati Brigade’s reconnaissance unit came under attack in the Gazan city of Rafah from a group of Hamas fighters who had emerged from a nearby tunnel. Three Israeli soldiers, including Goldin, were killed in the exchange, and the young lieutenant’s body was smuggled by Hamas fighters into the tunnel.

In the more than three and a half years since then, Israel has reportedly been in back-channel talks with Hamas to retrieve the remains of Goldin and another IDF soldier killed in the war, Oron Shaul, along with two living Israeli citizens, Avraham Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed, who entered the Palestinian enclave apparently due to mental illness.

Those negotiations have yet to yield results. Hamas insists that Israel release many convicted terrorists from prison before negotiations can even begin, which Israel refuses to do.

The families of Goldin and Shaul have become, at times, vocal critics of the government for its failure to recover their sons’ remains.