Yehuda Katz was declared missing after the Battle of Sultan Yacoub during the 1982 Lebanon war.By David Rosenberg, World Israel NewsThe remains of IDF soldier Yehuda Katz, the last serviceman still missing from the 1982 Battle of Sultan Yacoub, have been located and returned to Israel, closing one of the longest-running missing-soldier cases in the country’s history.The IDF informed Katz’s siblings, Avi and Parachia, of the recovery Tuesday morning, more than 44 years after he disappeared during the disastrous armored battle against Syrian forces in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley.The breakthrough followed intelligence obtained in recent months and a special operation carried out after years of efforts by Israeli military intelligence and the Mossad.Israeli reporting said the remains were recovered in Lebanon in an overnight covert operation, although the military has not publicly disclosed the precise location or all operational details.The material recovered did not constitute Katz’s complete body, but included remains that could be used to establish his identity.The discovery brings to an end the decades-long search for the three soldiers who became known collectively as the missing men of Sultan Yacoub: Katz, Zachary Baumel and Zvi Feldman.Baumel’s remains were recovered in 2019 in an operation involving Israeli intelligence and Russian assistance.Feldman’s body was brought back to Israel in May 2025 following a covert Mossad and IDF operation in Syria. Katz remained the final unresolved case from the battle.Katz, whose full name was Yekutiel Yehuda Nachman Katz, was born in Ramat Gan in 1959 to Joseph and Sarah Katz, Holocaust survivors.He studied at Yeshivat Nehalim and later at the Kerem B’Yavneh hesder yeshiva, combining religious studies with combat service in the IDF Armored Corps.He was just 10 days from completing his military service when the First Lebanon War broke out and he joined his unit in Lebanon.Katz disappeared during the Battle of Sultan Yacoub on June 11, 1982, shortly before a ceasefire was due to enter effect.Israeli forces had been ordered to seize commanding territory near the Beirut-Damascus highway.Acting on faulty or incomplete intelligence suggesting the area was relatively free of Syrian forces, elements of the IDF’s 90th Division moved toward the strategic Sultan Yacoub junction.Instead, the Israeli armored force found itself caught inside a heavily defended Syrian position.Battalion 362 was subjected to intense fire from surrounding Syrian forces through the night, and earlier attempts to extricate the unit failed. Israeli forces ultimately withdrew under cover of massive artillery fire.The battle became one of the most controversial episodes of the First Lebanon War and was subsequently associated with serious intelligence and operational failures.Twenty Israeli troops were killed and roughly 30 were wounded, while several soldiers were left behind.Two were eventually returned alive from captivity, while the remains of another soldier were returned after the fighting. Katz, Baumel and Feldman remained unaccounted for for decades.The uncertainty surrounding Katz’s fate proved particularly painful for his family because evidence over the years never conclusively established what had happened to him immediately after the battle.His sister Parachia continued for decades to hold out hope that he might have survived.“If Yehuda was in the same situation, why didn’t they return him?” she asked in a 2024 interview, referring to other soldiers and equipment taken by Syrian forces. “Where did he go?”She also pointed to prisoners who emerged from Syrian prisons decades after disappearing as a reason the family was unwilling to abandon the possibility that Katz had survived.“We have been claiming for years that this is possible and not just a dream,” she said.Katz’s parents did not live to learn his fate. His mother Sarah died in 2011, followed by his father Joseph in 2014.Israeli intelligence agencies continued pursuing leads long after the battle faded from the center of public attention.The first major breakthrough came with Baumel.His remains were returned to Israel in April 2019 after being located in Syria. At Baumel’s funeral, Israeli leaders publicly vowed that the search for Katz and Feldman would continue.The effort produced another breakthrough six years later, when Feldman’s remains were retrieved from Syria in a complex operation involving intelligence collection and operatives working deep inside enemy territory.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said after Feldman’s return in May 2025 that Israel would continue looking for Katz, declaring, “We will not cease our efforts” until the final missing soldier from the battle was brought home.Defense Minister Israel Katz similarly said at the time that bringing home Israel’s missing soldiers and captives, living or dead, was “our moral and national duty.”Tuesday’s announcement fulfills that commitment more than four decades after the three soldiers vanished.Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich praised the forces and intelligence personnel responsible for the latest operation and offered condolences to Katz’s family.“There is no other nation or state in the world” that would persist for so many years in bringing home its missing soldiers, Smotrich said.Former deputy defense minister Eli Ben Dahan, who fought in the Sultan Yacoub battle, said he felt “chills this morning” when he learned that Katz had finally been located.“No one is left behind,” he said. “The eternal people are not afraid of a long road.”The post Remains of missing IDF soldier recovered after 44 years appeared first on World Israel News.