Hundreds of people lined the roads and bridges in central Israel to pay last respects to Inbar Haiman — the last female hostage to be released from Gaza — as her funeral procession made its way to a cemetery in Petah Tikva on Friday.

Haiman, 27, was murdered at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, and her body was taken to Gaza, where it was held until it was returned to Israel on Wednesday night as part of the Gaza ceasefire.

She is survived by her parents Yifat and Haim Haiman, brother Ido and partner Noam Alon who advocated tirelessly for her release over the past two years.

Haiman’s family requested that those paying their last respects for Inbar wear the color pink, in honor of the visual communications student’s graffiti moniker, Pink. A pink rose lay on her coffin.

Speaking at the funeral, Haiman’s mother Yifat, said: “Rest in peace, my pink angel.”

“You waited for all the Nova people to return, and you came back last,” she said. “We waited month after month, deal after deal, and in the end, you came last, because you’re a personality that helps everyone.”

“How does a mother separate from a daughter after raising her for 27 years?” she asked. “How do you raise such a radiant and beautiful girl, who always helps everyone and puts herself last?”

Haiman’s father Haim said Inbar was “a girl of endless giving, freedom, light and love.”

“How can I separate from you when I feel like you’re still alive?” he said. “I remember our hikes every Saturday, when we would ride bikes in the orchards behind home.

“I remember tying your hair in ponytails and taking you to kindergarten. Your lively laugher, your powerful hug — I remember every moment, my beautiful girl.”

Noam Alon, Inbar’s partner, said she taught him how to love.

“You changed my life and made me feel things I didn’t think I’d get to feel,” he said. “I wish you had a different end… I don’t want you to be remembered for the way your life ended. That’s unfair.”

“You were a living person and everyone has been talking for two years about how dead you are,” he lamented. “I want to remember you like you were the day before October 7.”

President Isaac Herzog also eulogized the “free spirit” and asked her family for forgiveness.

“Dearest Inbar, beloved, brave – the last of the [female] hostages to return to us!” Herzog began, adding, “We are all here… to finally grant you a place of rest.”

Addressing the Haiman family, Herzog asked for “forgiveness that we were not there for you. Forgiveness that we could not save you. Forgiveness that it took us so long to bring you home.”

Haiman was “an artist by nature, a free spirit, brave and sensitive,” said Herzog, lamenting that she “met her death with such cruelty — dragged into the darkness of hell by Hamas monsters.”

“In what kind of world must parents hope, for two long, horrific years, just for the right to bury their beloved daughter?” he asked.

“Perhaps, at last, we can begin to breathe a little” with the return of the last 20 living hostages on Monday, as well as the remains of Haiman’s and eight other slain hostages’ bodies in the past four days, said Herzog.

But “the mission is not yet complete” until the remaining 19 deceased hostages are brought home, he said, adding: “We must neither rest nor be still until every last one of our abducted fallen is granted proper rest in the soil of our homeland.”

Also present at the funeral were the government’s hostages point man Gal Hirsch as well as Justice Minister Yariv Levin and Science and Technology Minister Gila Gamliel, both members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party and of the security cabinet.

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In footage from the scene, a heckler could be seen yelling at Levin, “Get out of here,” and “This is unacceptable.”

The heckler was identified on social media as pro-hostage deal and anti-government activist Alon Mishali. The rest of his remarks in the footage were drowned out by applause from people around him.