Israel has threatened to resume fighting in Gaza after Hamas announced it cannot return any further remains of deceased Israeli hostages without specialist recovery equipment that is needed to retrieve the rest from the ruins of the devastated territory.
The threat from Israel Katz, the defence minister, came after Hamas handed over the remains of two further bodies late on Wednesday, bringing the total of known deceased hostages returned by Hamas to nine – along with a 10th body that Israel said was not that of a former hostage.
Israeli officials also said that the Rafah crossing from Gaza into Egypt, which aid agencies consider critical for bringing sufficient humanitarian assistance into the territory, would open at “a later stage” and not on Thursday as planned.
A spokesperson for Cogat, the Israeli defence ministry body that oversees civil affairs in the Palestinian territories, also suggested that Rafah would remain closed to aid in the future, although individual passage would be allowed.
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“It should be emphasised that humanitarian aid will not pass through the Rafah crossing. This was never agreed upon at any stage,” it said, adding that “aid continues to enter the Gaza Strip” through other crossings.
Israel’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, an opponent of the ceasefire plan, said on X that the aid delivery was a “disgrace” and accused Hamas of lies over the return of hostages’ bodies.
Aid agencies and the United Nations are calling for Israel to open more crossings to allow “thousands of trucks” to enter the devastated territory every day.
On Thursday, a senior Hamas official accused Israel of flouting the ceasefire by having killed at least 24 people in shootings since Friday, and said a list of such violations was handed over to mediators.
“The occupying state is working day and night to undermine the agreement through its violations on the ground,” he said.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to the Hamas accusations. It has previously said some Palestinians have ignored warnings not to approach Israeli ceasefire positions and troops “opened fire to remove the threat”.
Israel has said that the next phase of the truce calls for Hamas to disarm and cede power, which it has so far refused to do. Hamas has launched a security crackdown, parading its power in Gaza through public executions and clashes with local clans.
Donald Trump’s 20-point plan includes “full aid” reaching Gaza, where a famine was declared in parts in August, as well as the return of all the hostages, dead and alive.
Regional officials have told the Guardian they expected the first days and weeks of the ceasefire agreed by Hamas and Israel to be “tense” and “scratchy”, with aid and the return of the remains of hostages among key issues. Much of Mr Trump’s plan, including many of the most difficult issues, has yet to be fully discussed by negotiating teams.
Although the number of dead hostages returned by Hamas is well short of the 28 expected by Israel, senior US advisers later said they believed Hamas was committed to finding and returning the rest.
“If Hamas refuses to comply with the agreement, Israel, in co-ordination with the United States, will resume fighting and act to achieve a total defeat of Hamas, to change the reality in Gaza and achieve all the objectives of the war,” a statement from Mr Katz’s office said.
Hamas’s military wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam brigades, said in a statement on social media that the group had “fulfilled its commitment to the agreement by handing over all living Israeli prisoners in its custody, as well as the corpses it could access ... as for the remaining corpses, it requires extensive efforts and special equipment for their retrieval and extraction.”
The deal also requires Israel to return the bodies of 360 Palestinians. Many of the 90 bodies returned by Israeli authorities so far showed signs of torture and execution, including blindfolds, cuffed hands and bullet wounds in the head, according to doctors’ accounts.
“Almost all of them had been blindfolded, and had been bound up and they had gunshots between the eyes. Almost all of them had been executed,” said Dr Ahmed al-Farra, the head of the Nasser hospital’s paediatric department in Khan Younis.
The dispute over the return of bodies still has the potential to upset the ceasefire deal along with other major issues that are yet to be resolved.
Since Monday, under a ceasefire agreement brokered by the US president, Hamas released 20 surviving hostages in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees freed from Israeli jails. This figure includes 1,700 Palestinians that were seized from Gaza during the war and held without charge.
Seeking to keep the pressure on Hamas, Mr Trump said he would consider allowing Israeli forces to resume fighting in Gaza if Hamas failed to uphold its end of the ceasefire deal that he brokered.
“Israel will return to those streets as soon as I say the word. If Israel could go in and knock the crap of them, they’d do that,” Mr Trump was quoted as saying to CNN in a brief telephone call when asked what would happen if Hamas refused to disarm.
After the threat from Mr Katz, a senior US adviser briefed the media late on Wednesday that retrieving the bodies from Gaza was difficult because it had been “pulverised”.
“There was a lot of disappointment and outrage when only four bodies were returned, and they could have just said, you know: ‘We’re moving on ….’ But they returned bodies the next day and then the next day, as quickly as we give them intelligence,” the adviser said, adding that the US and other mediators were looking at a programme of rewards for people helping locate the bodies of dead hostages.
Meanwhile, Turkey, one of the key mediators in the deal, was in talks to provide experts on body retrieval to send to Gaza, the adviser added.
[ View from Israel: We can only hope Donald Trump is right and the world winsOpens in new window ]
The Israeli army announced on Thursday that it had identified the remains of hostages, Inbar Hayman and Mohammad al-Atrash, whose bodies were returned to Israel on Wednesday evening by Hamas.
Inbar Hayman, a graffiti artist from Haifa known by the pseudonym “Pink”, was 27 when she was killed at the Nova music festival. Her remains were taken to Gaza. The remains of Sgt Maj Mohammad al-Atrash (39), a soldier of Bedouin origin who was killed in combat on October 7th, were also taken to the Palestinian territory. – Guardian
