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Hamas said it handed over the remains of a deceased hostage to the Red Cross on Monday night, with the body then transferred to Israeli authorities, who were working to confirm their identity.
It was the first time Hamas had handed over a body in six days, as Israel insists that the terror group is dragging its feet on the requirement of the ceasefire that came into place on October 10.
The agreement required Hamas to return all 48 living and deceased hostages within 72 hours, and while the group followed through in handing over all 20 living hostages, it only returned four of the 28 bodies still held in Gaza within the required timeframe. As of Monday morning, the bodies of 13 deceased hostages were still in Gaza.
Hamas said in its Monday statement that it had “retrieved” a hostage’s remains earlier that day, without elaborating further, while Al Jazeera reported that the body was recovered during a search of Gaza City’s Tuffah neighborhood in the northern Strip.
The Red Cross handed over the coffin to IDF troops inside Gaza. The military inspected the casket and draped it in an Israeli flag. A small ceremony led by a military rabbi was then held.
The casket was subsequently transferred to Israel, where police escorted it to the Abu Kabir forensic institute in Tel Aviv for identification, a process that officials have said may take up to two days.
If the body is indeed that of a slain hostage, it would leave the remains of twelve hostages in Gaza.
According to a Channel 13 report published prior to the latest handover, Israeli intelligence believed Hamas could locate the remains of 10 of the then-13 slain hostages’ bodies still held in Gaza.
Among those are Col. Asaf Hamami and Lt. Hadar Goldin — the former commander of the Gaza Division’s Southern Brigade and a soldier killed in 2014, respectively. Israel believes Hamas is intentionally withholding those bodies because the fallen soldiers have become symbolic figures in Israel, the report added.
Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of intentionally holding onto bodies despite knowing where they are, in violation of the US-brokered agreement that stopped fighting in the two-year-old war.
Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem denied this on Monday, saying: “The occupation’s claims that Hamas knows the whereabouts of hostages are false, particularly after the aggression in the Strip [a reference to the war], which has changed the face of the territory.”
IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir said Monday that the war will not be over until the last of the deceased hostages held in Gaza are brought home, referring to this as a “sacred mission,” and also calling for Israel to “continue the campaign against Hamas.”
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum on Monday demanded that the next steps in the US-brokered Gaza peace plan be put on hold until Hamas returns the remaining bodies.
“Hamas knows exactly where every one of the deceased hostages is held. Two weeks have passed since the deadline set in the agreement for the return of all 48 hostages, yet 13 remain in Hamas captivity,” the forum said.
“The families urge the Government of Israel, the Trump administration and the mediators not to advance to the next phase of the [Gaza peace plan] until Hamas fulfills all of its obligations and returns every hostage to Israel.”
Israel said to float moving ceasefire line to pressure Hamas
On Sunday, US President Donald Trump issued a Truth Social post warning that he would be following closely Hamas’s actions over the next 48 hours, suggesting that the group wasn’t doing enough to retrieve the remaining hostages.
The post marked a shift, as the US had largely pushed back on Israeli accusations that Hamas was violating the ceasefire, arguing that it will take time to retrieve some of the bodies as they are buried deep under rubble or in places where Hamas doesn’t know where they are.
However, Channel 12 reported that Trump’s post was not meant as a hard deadline for the terror group to return the remaining bodies of slain hostages, as the 48-hour window closed.
Citing unnamed US officials, the network said Trump’s message was intended to signal that he expects Hamas to urgently begin returning the bodies of hostages.
Israel, meanwhile, is continuing to push for a credible threat of action to pressure Hamas to comply with the deal, the network reported, saying that while the US opposes restricting humanitarian aid to Gaza, Washington is open to discussing an Israeli proposal to move the IDF’s “yellow line” westward — allowing Israeli forces to enter areas previously held by Hamas — if the terror group continues to withhold the deceased hostages’ bodies.
Trump’s envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, have told families of both living and slain hostages in recent days that the US is exerting maximum pressure on Hamas to resume the releases, the report said, adding that during Trump’s meeting Saturday with Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, he reportedly said he wanted to prioritize the return of the bodies of US citizens Itay Chen and Omer Neutra.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
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