Katz disappeared during the Battle of Sultan Yacoub on June 11, 1982.
By United with Israel Staff
The remains of IDF soldier Yehuda Katz, missing since the 1982 Battle of Sultan Yacoub, have been recovered and returned to Israel, ending a search that lasted more than 44 years.
The IDF informed Katz’s siblings, Avi and Parachia, on Tuesday morning. He was the last of three Israeli soldiers missing from the battle whose fate remained unresolved.
The breakthrough followed intelligence gathered in recent months and a special operation after years of efforts by Israeli military intelligence and the Mossad. Israeli reports said the remains were recovered from Lebanon in a covert overnight mission, though the military has not disclosed the precise location or operational details.
Katz, whose full name was Yekutiel Yehuda Nachman Katz, was born in Ramat Gan in 1959 to Holocaust survivors Joseph and Sarah Katz. He studied at Yeshivat Nehalim and the Kerem B’Yavneh hesder yeshiva before serving in the IDF Armored Corps.
He was just 10 days from completing his military service when the First Lebanon War erupted.
Katz disappeared during the Battle of Sultan Yacoub on June 11, 1982, when Israeli armored forces advancing through Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley encountered heavily defended Syrian positions.
The Israeli force came under intense fire before eventually withdrawing under artillery cover. Twenty IDF soldiers were killed and approximately 30 wounded in a battle that became one of the most painful episodes of the First Lebanon War.
Katz disappeared alongside Zachary Baumel and Zvi Feldman, beginning a decades-long effort to determine their fate and bring them home.
Baumel’s remains were recovered from Syria in 2019. Feldman was returned to Israel in May 2025 following a covert Mossad and IDF operation in Syria, leaving Katz as the last missing soldier from Sultan Yacoub.
His parents did not live to see the search completed. His mother died in 2011 and his father in 2014, while his siblings continued waiting for answers.
After Feldman’s return last year, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed that Israel would not stop searching for Katz.
“We will not cease our efforts,” Netanyahu said.
Tuesday’s recovery fulfills that pledge and closes the final missing-soldier case from Sultan Yacoub more than four decades after the battle.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich praised those involved in the operation, saying few countries would persist for so many years in bringing home their missing soldiers.
Former deputy defense minister Eli Ben Dahan, who fought at Sultan Yacoub, summed up the moment: “No one is left behind. The eternal people are not afraid of a long road.”
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