The IDF and Shin Bet, in a special and secret operation, recovered the body of Staff Sergeant Oron Shaul, an IDF soldier who fell in battle in Gaza's Shijaiyah on July 20, 2014, during Operation Protective Edge. He fell in the APC disaster in the Gaza Strip alongside six other fighters.
He was initially declared missing, but Hamas announced that the soldier was in its possession. The IDF determined that he was no longer alive and a few days later declared him a fallen soldier whose burial place was unknown.
"Efforts to recover him, including the collection of information and intelligence by the Prisoners of War and Missing Persons Command and the Special Operations Division in the Intelligence Branch, have continued throughout the past decade and even more intensely during the war," the IDF said.
Several IDF and Shin Bet special units took part in the operation, including the 13th Battalion, 162nd Division forces and Intelligence Directorate units, as well as Golani Brigade fighters. The IDF does not address questions about when and how his body had been recovered but stated that the operations took place in the past 24 hours. There were no casualties among IDF forces in the operation.
Shaul was identified at the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Israel, after which IDF representatives informed his family. The family of the kidnapped soldier Hadar Goldin was also informed, although his body was not recovered from the Strip. Some 97 hostages are currently being held in the Gaza Strip, including Hadar Goldin, who also fell in Operation Protective Edge. In addition to him, hostages Avraham Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed have also been held in the Strip since 2014, and are scheduled to be released during the first phase of the hostage deal.
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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that "in a special operation by the Shin Bet and the IDF before the cease-fire came into effect, we returned to Israel the body of the late Golan fighter Oron Shaul. I hug the Shaul family, my dears, and congratulate the Shin Bet and IDF forces for their resourcefulness and courage."
"The picture of Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin, of blessed memory, who fell in Operation Protective Edge in 2014, has been in front of my eyes in my office for many years as daily testimony to my commitment to bringing them home. Tonight we completed the mission to return Oron, and we will not be silent or rest until we also complete the mission to return Hadar Goldin. We will continue to work to return all of our hostages- both the living and the dead."
Herzl Shaul, Oron's father, died about two years after the APC disaster in which his son was kidnapped. He died after a long battle with small intestine cancer. Before his death, he said that he contracted the disease due to the suffering he had endured since Oron's fall and the wait for his return from Hamas."
In December 2023, the IDF reported that fighters from the 13th Battalion of the Golani, together with the 188th Brigade combat team, took over and destroyed Palestine Square in the neighborhood, where Hamas had erected a statue glorifying the disaster. The square was erected after Operation Protective Edge, and the statue in its center depicts a fist emerging from an APC, with three discs on it, one of which bore Oron Shaul's name.