Israel received the hostage's body after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he expected the remains of a soldier killed in 2014 to be returned.
According to the Israeli military, the body was taken for identification.
Netanyahu previously said Israel should receive the body of Hadar Goldin, a soldier who was killed in a Hamas ambush during the previous conflict in 2014 and whose body has since been held in Gaza.
Hamas's armed wing also said on Sunday it would hand over Hadar Goldin's body.
If the body is confirmed to be Lt. Goldin, Hamas will return all 20 living hostages and 24 of the 28 deceased hostages under the first phase of the ceasefire agreement.
Netanyahu said that Lt. Goldin's family would now be able to give him a Jewish burial and confirmed his intention to return the bodies of all deceased hostages.
“So far we have brought back 250 people. We will bring them all back,” he said.
On Saturday, Lieutenant Goldin's family said that “the whole nation is waiting for Hadar to return to us.”
“We are waiting for official confirmation that Hadar has returned to Israel. We don't give up on anyone in this country, ever. We ask everyone to remain calm. Until everything is final, it is not over,” the family said in a statement.
IDF soldier Hadar Goldin was killed in the Gaza Strip in 2014. [Reuters]
Lt. Goldin, from Kfar Saba, is the only dead hostage whose remains were held in the Gaza Strip before the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, which sparked a new war.
He was killed in action on August 1, 2014, shortly after a ceasefire began in that year's war between Israel and Hamas. He was among a group of Israeli soldiers who were patrolling a farming area near Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip when they were attacked by a group of Hamas militants.
The Israeli military determined that Lieutenant Goldin was killed along with two other soldiers in a shootout, and then Hamas militants dragged his body into an underground tunnel.
The Israeli military used massive firepower in an attempt to prevent Hamas from taking Lieutenant Goldin hostage. Dozens of Palestinian civilians were killed in the bombing of Rafah, which continued for four days, including after Lt. Goldin was declared dead.
On Saturday, the Israeli military said it had identified the body transferred from Gaza as that of Israeli-Argentinean Lior Rudaeff.
Also on Saturday, two Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli military said the two people had crossed the yellow line marking the Israeli line of control in the Gaza Strip and posed an “imminent threat.”
At least 241 people have been killed in Israeli military action since the ceasefire began, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, which the UN considers reliable.
The Israeli military launched a campaign in the Gaza Strip in response to the Oct. 7, 2023, attack in which Hamas-led militants killed about 1,200 people in southern Israel and took another 251 hostage.
Since then, Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip have killed at least 69,169 people, according to the Health Ministry.
