Returned, Remembered: The Quiet, Sharp Grief After a Body Comes Home
When the small white van eased into the driveway of Kibbutz Nir Oz late on a cool evening, the air around the cluster of low-slung houses seemed to hold its breath. Word spreads differently in places like this — by murmured phone calls, the slow clink of teacups set down in doorways, the rustle of movement in corridors once so familiar. Families gathered not for celebration, but to receive the body of a man who had been stolen from them in the first hours of a war that still will not stop reshaping their lives.
Officials in Jerusalem confirmed overnight that the remains returned by Gaza via the Red Cross have been identified as 75-year-old Eliyahu “Eli” Margalit, a retired gardener and lifelong resident of the kibbutz. He was taken during the Oct. 7, 2023 assault that tore through border communities and ignited the conflict that followed. For his loved ones, the arrival of his remains is a confluence of relief, sorrow, and the thin comfort that comes with having someone to put in the ground.
Homecomings that are not yet home
The transfer, coordinated by humanitarian intermediaries and medical authorities, brought an end to weeks of uncertainty. “We got the call at midnight,” said Yael, a neighbor who has lived at Nir Oz for three decades and who asked that her last name not be used. “You don’t ever imagine it will be your friend. Then you see the flag, the careful way they handle him, and everything that was ordinary falls away.”
On paper, some facts are straightforward: Mr. Margalit was 75; his daughter, Nili, had been among those abducted and was returned under an earlier hostage release in November 2023; he leaves behind a wife, three children and grandchildren. But the numbers — like the tally of hostages or the dead — are lacework over a much more jagged reality. Israeli officials say 28 hostages are known to have died in captivity; to date, the militant group has handed over the remains of 10 of those people and returned 20 surviving hostages as part of a negotiated pause in fighting. Parties to the agreement had been expected to complete the handover of all the living and the dead by a set deadline, a deadline that has now lapsed and become another contested point.
“Returning a body is not the end of the story,” said Dr. Helena Abramov, a forensic anthropologist who has worked on identification efforts in conflict zones. “It is a crucial step in allowing families to grieve, to perform their rituals, and to establish a form of truth. But closure — if any exists — is partial. Many questions remain: about how he died, about who else is still missing, about the terms of the trade that brought these remains home.”
A chorus of voices, a clash of narratives
From the prime minister’s office came a terse refrain familiar in wartime: a vow not to relent until all the abducted are returned. “We will not spare any effort to bring every fallen and living hostage home,” an official statement read, its cadence part admonition, part promise.
From the other side, Hamas spokespeople emphasized compliance with agreed terms. “We continue to uphold the ceasefire framework and are working to complete the prisoner exchange process,” a statement attributed to a spokesperson said, reiterating that the militant group had fulfilled parts of the agreement while urging the other side to meet its own obligations.
Between those statements are families like the Margalits’ — people whose days are now full of the ordinariness of mourning: deciding on burial rites, sitting shiva with neighbors, collecting photographs and stories to tell and retell so the person who is gone does not evaporate into a headline. “Eliyahu loved the almond trees along the east fence,” Nili reportedly told a friend after her father’s return. “He would prune them every winter like he was pruning the sky.” Such small, luminous details are the scaffolding of a life, and their retrieval is as important to many families as the official pronouncements.
Why the return of remains matters — and why it complicates peace
Humanitarian law has long held that the dead have rights too: to identification, to dignified handling, and to return to their families when possible. The Red Cross and other agencies frequently act as intermediaries in such exchanges, because they are among the few organizations both sides accept as neutral enough to oversee sensitive transfers. Yet even these operations are not merely administrative. They are political acts loaded with symbolism, bargaining power and public emotion.
“When a body is returned, it changes the bargaining table,” said Michael Lichtenstein, a former negotiator who has worked on hostage recovery in several conflicts. “It removes an element of ambiguity; it forces parties and publics to confront the human consequences of policy. That’s why returns are both sought and delayed: they are humanitarian, and they are leverage.”
This tug-of-war is visible in the numbers: the specific count of bodies delivered, the pace of returns, the sequencing of prisoners and hostages. Each move is read and reread through the prism of strategy and suffering. For families, however, the calculations are less abstract. The task is visceral: to lay out a body to face beloved faces one last time, to observe religious rites — or, for some, to decide alternatives when traditional rituals are impossible.
Local color: life along the border
Nir Oz sits within the thin, green strip of Israeli farmland that breathes with the ebb and flow of seasons and geopolitics. Mornings used to begin with the mooing of cows and the clatter of tractors. Now the soundscape is different: distant military vehicles, hums of drones overhead, gatherings that alternate between prayer and debate. Still, neighbors recall simpler times — barbecues under studded skies, children chasing each other between almond trees.
“We met for Friday salads and music under an old eucalyptus,” said Reuven, a retired teacher who runs a community library in the kibbutz. “Now, we meet mostly to count and to mourn. That is the cruelty of this place — life insists on continuing, but the seams have been torn.”
Asking the hard questions
What does a return mean for justice? For reconciliation? For the political calculations that govern every ceasefire and exchange? When the dead are returned, does it reduce pressure for a broader resolution, or does it create the space where people can actually speak? These are not academic queries: they shape policy, and they shape the contours of grief.
Readers who watch these events from afar might wonder: How do societies rebuild after such dislocation? How do neighbors, who once harvested tomatoes together, learn to trust again? The answer is both mundane and profound: in small acts of remembrance and the slow labor of rebuilding social ties. For the Margalit family, rebuilding will begin with the burial, with stories told to grandchildren, and with the careful tending of a garden where the grandfather once worked.
In the weeks ahead, more bodies may be returned, more names confirmed, more doors closed and then reopened. Each is its own world of sorrow and memory. As diplomats haggle and politicians posture, those left behind will keep doing the work few headlines fully capture: preparing graves, carrying candles, and — sometimes — finding reasons to laugh at an old joke that refuses to die.
What would you do if your community was rewritten overnight? How would you honor both the living and the dead amid a landscape of loss? These are not abstract questions; they are the quiet reckonings families like the Margalits confront now, with hearts that beat like everyone else’s and stories that insist on being told.
