Haitham Imad/EPA
Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip
If Hamas refuses to respect the agreement, Israel, in coordination with the US, will resume fighting. The bodies of hostages are at stake.
The Israeli Defense Minister threatened this Wednesday to resume fighting in the Gaza Strip if Hamas does not respect the ceasefire agreement, after the Islamist movement said it was unable to locate the bodies of any more hostages.
“If Hamas refuses to respect the agreement, Israel, in coordination with the United States, will resume fighting and will work towards the total defeat of Hamas”, can be read in a statement released by Israel Katz’s office.
Katz reacted in this way to the Palestinian Islamist group’s announcement that it had handed over all the remains of hostages held in Gaza to which he had access.
For the ruler, this is a violation of the agreement, which stipulates that “the Hamas is obliged to return all dead hostages which he holds in his power.”
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed in the evening that the coffins of two hostages were handed over by the Red Cross to Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli Army also disclosed that the coffins were in Israeli territory and “on their way to the National Institute of Legal Medicine for identification,” according to a statement.
The delivery of these two bodies joins the seven bodies of hostages previously handed over by Hamas, after an Israeli forensic institute stated that an eighth body did not correspond to any of the 28 dead hostages.
O Hamas stated, in turn, that he had fulfilled his “commitment to the agreement” and said he has already handed over all “Israeli prisoners alive in its custody, as well as the bodies to which he had access.”
“As for the remaining bodies, great efforts and special equipment are required for its recovery and extraction,” Hamas added in a statement released on its official channels.
There are still 19 bodies of Israeli hostages to be handed overin exchange for at least 360 bodies of Gaza residents killed during the offensive, 90 of which have already been returned to Gaza by the Israeli Army, as stipulated in the agreement.
White House denies
Os US denied this Wednesday that the Hamas be at violate the agreement ceasefire with Israel.
The White House recalls that it already expected the process to return the bodies of the hostages were prolonged, due to the difficult conditions on site, indicates the .
“We heard a lot of people saying, ‘Hamas violated the agreement, because not all the bodies were returned.’ The agreement we had with them was that we take all the hostages alive, which they honored”, commented a senior advisor to President Donald Trump.
The White House team highlighted the efforts of Hamas to recover the remaining bodies still in Gaza.
The US is working with Israel to establish a safe zone within the Gaza areas; the White House recognizes that the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip will be complex.
What the agreement provides
The ceasefire provided for the handover of all hostages, living and deaduntil the deadline, which expired on Monday.
But, according to the agreement, if this did not happen, Hamas would share information about the deceased hostages and try to hand them over as quickly as possible.
In exchange for the hostages returned by Hamas, 1,968 Palestinian prisoners were also released on Monday, including many convicted of deadly attacks against Israel, as well as 1,700 Palestinians imprisoned for alleged “security reasons”since the start of the war, in October 2023.
The President of the United States also demanded that Hamas return the bodies of the hostages, after having been the main driver of the ceasefire agreement in the Gaza Strip, negotiated over several days in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, with the mediation of Egyptian, Qatari and Turkish delegations.
At this stage, a ceasefire was agreed in the Gaza Strip, the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces, the mass entry of humanitarian aid into the Palestinian enclave and the exchange of hostages for prisoners
The agreement defines that an international committee will help Hamas find the bodies of hostages reported missing, and, according to the Israeli press, technical meetings are taking place in Egypt.
The second phase will address the reconstruction, as well as the disarmament of Hamas and governance do enclave.
The war in the Gaza Strip was triggered by attacks led by Hamas on October 7, 2023 in southern Israel, in which around 1,200 people died and 251 were taken hostage.
In retaliation, Israel launched a large-scale military operation in the Gaza Strip, which caused more than 67,000 deaths, according to local authorities controlled by Hamas, the destruction of almost all of the territory’s infrastructure and the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people.
