Egypt launched an effort over the weekend to help locate the bodies of Israeli and U.S. hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.
The terrorist group has already located and returned 15 of the hostages’ remains under the terms of the Gaza ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, which President Donald Trump brokered earlier this month.
However, Hamas said it has had difficulty retrieving the remains of 13 additional bodies lost in the Gaza rubble, prompting a warning from Trump to move faster and leading to Egypt’s involvement in the matter. Along with Qatar and Turkey, Egypt was one of the primary mediators that worked with the Trump team to negotiate the peace deal between Hamas and Israel.
An Egyptian team of experts entered the Gaza Strip on Saturday with several engineering vehicles, excavators, and other equipment to assist with locating the bodies. The Red Cross is also involved in the latest effort, which was personally approved by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to the Times of Israel.
Information from Israel and Hamas on the locations of dead hostages has been given to the Egyptian team to guide its search. Israeli intelligence reportedly knows the location of nine of the bodies. In addition, Netanyahu is allowing Hamas operatives, accompanied by the Red Cross, to cross the “yellow line” into the Israel Defense Forces-controlled areas in Gaza to search for the bodies, according to the outlet.
Hamas’s chief in Gaza, Khalil al Hayya, confirmed his terrorist organization started searching new areas for bodies of the remaining 13 hostages, according to comments the group shared Sunday.
“This has been a very intense effort on behalf of our joint center with Israel and with the mediators in order to convey whatever information Israel has on the whereabouts of the bodies to the mediators and to Hamas in order to retrieve them,” Jared Kushner, one of Trump’s senior negotiators on the Gaza ceasefire, said during a CBS interview last week.
The renewed push to locate the hostages follows Trump’s warning Saturday that he was “watching very closely” to ensure Hamas returns more bodies in the next 48 hours.
“Hamas is going to have to start returning the bodies of the deceased hostages, including two Americans, quickly, or the other Countries involved in this GREAT PEACE will take action. Some of the bodies are hard to reach, but others they can return now, and, for some reason, they are not,” he wrote in a post to Truth Social.
Due partly to U.S. pressure, humanitarian aid has begun flowing into Gaza since the ceasefire started, although there remain some limitations.
Over 2,000 aid trucks entered Gaza from Egypt through the Rafah land crossing between Oct. 18 and Oct. 23, according to a report from Egypt Today published over the weekend. Other reports indicate entry at the crossing point has been more limited.
Kushner weighed in on the road ahead in Gaza in terms of distributing aid and securing the bodies of hostages last week.
“You have a lot of people with good intentions right now. An example is that the U.N. is trying very hard to get food to the people of Gaza. The Turks were offering to send a recovery and rescue team in to help search for some of the dead hostages that we’re looking to recover. And there’s just a lot of miscommunication that stalls and holds up some of these efforts. So getting all sides’ perspectives and finding a mechanism to get quick adjudications and the right adjudications is something that’s very necessary to put in place,” he said during an appearance on CBS News’s 60 Minutes.
GAZA CEASEFIRE ‘RENEWED’ AFTER STRIKES ON HAMAS, IDF SAYS
When pressed on if Hamas is acting in “good faith” to retrieve the bodies, Kushner said: “As far as we’ve seen from what’s being conveyed to us from the mediators, they are so far, that could break down at any minute. But right now, we have seen them looking to honor their agreement.”
“We’re just trying to convey information and make sure that everyone knows the expectations and push both sides to be proactive in terms of finding a solution instead of blaming each other for breakdowns,” he added.
