The last hostage: After over 800 days, elite Israeli police officer who ran towards danger in October 7 attack is the last remaining in Gaza…as his mother clings to fragile hope he is still alive

After more than 800 days of unimaginable suffering, the future of Gaza largely depends on the fate of a single hostage.

The fact that only one person remains among the 251 people captured by Hamas on October 7, 2023 is, in many ways, a remarkable testament to the will of the Israeli people.

But that brings little comfort to 55-year-old Talik Gvili, the mother of the last hostage held on the Strip.

“It’s a feeling of helplessness,” he told the Daily Mail from his home in Meitar in southern Israel. ‘There’s a lot of fear, but there’s also expectation… These are all bad emotions.’

This week, Ms. Gvili and her husband, Itzik, 61, traveled to Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida and met with the US President and Benjamin Netanyahu.

As the two leaders talked publicly about further possible attacks on Iran and the ‘elimination’ of Hamas if they did not disarm, Ran’s parents reminded them that, according to the peace plan, their son’s return should be the top priority in Gaza.

In response, President Trump promised to ‘bring Ran home’.

The 24-year-old elite police officer had fled his home towards danger when Hamas launched the atrocities and Israeli authorities believed him dead.

Ms Gvili has been campaigning for her son’s release for more than 800 days

Talik Gvili with a photo of his son Ran presenting to Donald Trump this week, urging the President to bring him home

According to the first phase of Donald Trump’s 20-item peace plan, which came into force on October 10, 48 hostages had to be returned immediately.

However, while the 20 survivors were released, the terrorists stepped on the 28 dead and claimed that most of them could not be found under the rubble.

Now Israel and the Gvili family are painfully close.

“We cannot proceed to the second phase of the agreement until he is brought home,” Ms. Gvili said firmly.

This is the most important point for him; The fear of the world moving on before Ran returns home is too awful to bear.

The fragile ceasefire remains on a knife edge, with Mr Trump threatening this week that there will be ‘hell to pay’ if Hamas does not agree to disarm; This is another major sticking point that prevents progress beyond ‘phase one’.

However, if Ran is not extradited, an Israeli official told the Mail clearly that “there will be no second phase.”

Mrs Gvili still clings to hope for a miracle that her ‘wonderful, unique son’, a caregiver for children with learning disabilities and a gifted guitarist, has somehow survived.

‘We want to believe there is even a 0.0001 percent chance; “Maybe there’s hope that he’s still alive,” he said.

‘We hope he gets medical treatment but at the same time we keep our feet on the ground and realize there is a problem. We really hope they find him and bring him back.’

Mr Trump vows to bring Ran home after meeting hostage’s parents with Benjamin Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago

If Ran is returned, there will be no Israeli hostages left in Gaza for the first time in more than 10 years.

But it is held not by Hamas but by another terror group, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which chillingly declares: ‘The hostages issue is closed.’

“I think they know exactly where it is,” Ms. Gvili said. ‘It’s very clear to me.

‘They’re playing us or trying to pull some other trick to gain time. ‘I don’t believe them.’

For more than 800 days, Israelis demonstrated daily to put pressure on both their own government and the world, where 250 of the 251 people taken on October 7 were returned and the other four were detained for 10 years.

“After more than two years, we have recovered only one hostage out of 255: the brave hero Ran Gvili,” said a spokesman for the Forum on Hostages and Missing Persons, which is leading the effort.

‘We will not leave Ran behind. We will make every possible effort to ensure his return.’

Ran is believed to be held in Zeithoun, south-east of Gaza City, after he was shot in the hand and foot on October 7 and smuggled into Gaza unconscious on a motorbike.

Since then, his parents and siblings Omri, 29, and Shira, 24, have not stopped fighting for him.

Ms Gvili still receives love and support from the hostages’ families, who are ‘the only people in the world who understand’.

Now, like them, he hopes his ordeal will end soon.

But until then, he begs: ‘Please keep saying his name.’