Israel mentioned on Friday that one of many our bodies Hamas handed over as a part of the cease-fire deal didn’t belong to an Israeli lady taken hostage in 2023, because the Palestinian militant group had claimed.
The revelation prompted additional alarm over the way forward for the brittle truce and hostage-for-prisoner swap deal between Hamas and Israel. Hamas acknowledged there could have been a mix-up.
Right here’s what we all know to date.
Who had been the hostages?
Hamas mentioned on Thursday that it had handed over the stays of 4 hostages: Shiri Bibas, 32; her two youngsters, Ariel, 4, and Kfir Bibas, lower than a yr outdated; and Oded Lifshitz, 83. All 4 had been kidnapped from Nir Oz, a village close to Gaza that was devastated in Hamas’s shock assault on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
For a lot of Israelis, the Bibas household had turn into emblematic of the brutality of the Hamas assault. Footage of a terrified Ms. Bibas clutching her two youngsters whereas being led away by Palestinian gunmen has been seared into the Israeli public consciousness.
Hamas asserted that each one 4 hostages had been killed in Israeli airstrikes. However Israel mentioned that three of the 4 returned on Thursday — which had been recognized by way of DNA testing as belonging to Mr. Lifshitz and the 2 Bibas youngsters — had been murdered by their captors.
Daniel Hagari, the Israeli navy spokesman, mentioned the Bibas youngsters’s captors had killed them “with their naked fingers.” He mentioned Israel had shared the forensic and intelligence findings with its allies.
However neither Israel nor Hamas had but offered proof for public scrutiny.
What occurred on Thursday?
Hamas handed 4 coffins to the Worldwide Committee of the Crimson Cross in a televised ceremony. Every coffin bore the picture of a captive whose physique was alleged to be turned over to Israel, together with that of Ms. Bibas.
The show was condemned internationally, together with by Volker Türk, the United Nations excessive commissioner for human rights, who referred to as it “abhorrent and merciless.”
Israeli officers introduced the stays to the nation’s essential forensic institute in Tel Aviv, the place three had been confirmed to be whom Hamas mentioned they had been.
However the fourth was an “nameless, unidentified corpse,” the Israeli navy mentioned early Friday, ruling out that the stays had been these of Ms. Bibas.
What are Israel and Hamas saying?
Israel has referred to as the failure to return Ms. Bibas’s stays a extreme breach of the cease-fire. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed that Hamas “would pay the total value for this merciless and harsh violation.”
Hamas acknowledged in a press release “the potential of a mistake or a mixing up of corpses” and mentioned it could examine, calling on Israel to return the physique. The group mentioned it was dedicated to shifting ahead with the cease-fire settlement.
What’s subsequent?
Israel and Hamas had been set for one more hostage-for-prisoner change on Saturday — one that might free six Israeli hostages held in Gaza for plenty of Palestinians jailed by Israel. Though Israeli officers expressed outrage over Ms. Bibas’s destiny, they appeared looking forward to the following swap to go forward as deliberate.
On Friday, the Hamas-linked Prisoner Info Workplace mentioned that greater than 600 detainees could be launched in change. They had been to incorporate 50 Palestinian serving life sentences for lethal assaults in opposition to Israelis and one other 60 serving lengthy sentences, the workplace mentioned.
The remaining embody greater than 400 different Gazans detained in the course of the struggle, the workplace mentioned. These Gazans had typically been imprisoned with out formal prices and had been usually held incommunicado for lengthy durations.
It was unclear how that change would go forward given Israel’s accusation that Hamas didn’t uphold its finish of the deal.
Even when the swap on Saturday does go ahead, large questions hover over the way forward for the truce, which paused 15 months of devastating combating in Gaza that killed tens of hundreds of Palestinian civilians and combatants.
The primary part of the cease-fire deal expires in lower than two weeks, and Israel and Hamas have but to agree on phrases to increase it to a second part.
