The delicate Alto El Fuego in Gaza. In the early hours of this Friday, the Israeli army has reported that one of the four bodies of Israeli hostages that Hamas had delivered on the eve does not correspond to the fiance (Shiri Bibas), or to any other kidnapped in the attack of October 7 of 2023 of Forensic Medicine in Abu Kabir, south of Tel Aviv. The Armed Forces see a “serious violation” of the terms of the exchange, which is scheduled, with the release of the last six hostages alive from the first phase of the agreement and the release of dozens of Palestinian prisoners. The Forensic Center has confirmed that the other three bodies are those of the two children of Bibas -ariel and Kfir, taken hostages with four years and nine months, respectively -and the octogenarian Oded Lifshitz.
The surprising announcement reached the end of a day in which Hamas had delivered the four coffins after exposing them in a stage, against Prime Minister Benjamín Netanyahu to underline that they were kidnapped alive, but died in the first month of Gaza invasion, in one of the intense Israeli bombings.
The stage was dominated by Netanyahu’s faces, presented as a thirsty vampire of blood, and the four hostages dead next to a message: “The Netanyahu war criminal and his Nazi army killed them with missiles from Zionist planes.”
Hamas captained the event, but Shiri Bibas and his two children (who also have Argentine nationality) had been in the hands of another armed group, much lower, the Mujahidin brigades. His militiamen also participated in the delivery of the coffins to the personnel of the International Committee of the Red Cross. Each one was identified with the name in Hebrew and an image of the dead whose delivery had agreed through the mediators: USA, Egypt and Qatar. The United Nations Secretary General, António Guterres, condemned the show and recalled that any body delivery “must fulfill the prohibition of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.” His high Human Rights Commissioner, Volker Türk, labeled him as “abominable.”
“Reckoning”
After the ceremony (and before knowing the failed identification of the body of Shiri Bibas), Netanyahu promised an “adjustment of accounts” with Hamas, citing a phrase of the psalms: “Oh, god of revenge, Lord of revenge, appears!”.
The International Red Cross Committee delivered the coffins to Israeli troops, even inside Gaza, since during this first phase of the high the fire remain in a buffer zone. After a funeral ceremony officiated by a military rabbi, they were taken in ambulances to the forensic center. Lifshitz’s identification was fast. The Bibas was extended all day.
Shiri’s husband, Yardén, is the only one with the life of the four captured bibas. Hamas released him last month, in a particularly bitter exchange, since the agreement forced the living hostages to be given before to the bodies, so
Hamas already communicated it in November 2023, the first month of war, pointing out an Israeli bombing over Gaza. The Islamist movement informed the government of Netanyahu, through the mediators, which precisely because of this could not include them in the first high fire that occurred that same month and that only encompassed living hostages.
The negative identification of the body of Shiri Bibas further fragilizes the high fire, which has just completed a month with an uncertain future and the environment rarely rare by the Plan of the US president, Donald Trump (with the applause of Netanyahu) and the wide Israeli offensive in the West Bank.
The beginning of the dialogue to move on to the second phase, which must take to the definitive purpose of the war, accumulates, which the negotiating team has just changed. Although, he pointed out on Tuesday that the dialogue on the second phase would begin this week, Netanyahu’s right hand (which now leads the negotiations), Ron Dermer, plans to meet before with Trump’s envoy for the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, In a new sample that Israel first negotiates its position with Washington (one of the pact guarantors) and then takes her to the negotiating table.
To these problems is added in three buses in the Israeli town of Bat Yam, near Tel Aviv, which has not caused injuries because they were empty, in nearby parking lots. The police investigate it as a multiple attack of those who are scarce precedents since the end of the second intifada in 2005. No Palestinian armed group has claimed it.
Netanyahu has responded by ordering an “intensive operation” in the West Bank and its head of Defense, Israel Katz, an “increase in intensity” of which it has been underway – mainly in the refugee camps in the north of this occupied territory – and who has left dozen of dead
