Hamas announced on Wednesday that it had handed over all the hostages’ remains it could access, presenting a major hurdle to the Gaza peace deal.
The group has only handed over the remains of 10 people, one of whom Israel declared not a hostage, of the estimated 28 dead hostages. The original 20-point peace plan called for all living and dead hostages to be turned over within 72 hours, but the timeline for the dead hostages’ release quickly became more pliable as Hamas outlined the difficulty in recovering them. On Wednesday night, Hamas said it handed over all the remains it had without additional equipment.
The al Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing, said it “committed to what was agreed upon and handed over everyone it had in terms of living captives and what it had in terms of bodies that it could recover.”
It said it would need “special equipment” to find and extract the remaining 18 bodies but that it was “making great efforts.”
The Israel-Hamas war was one of the most destructive in modern history, reducing about 80% of the enclave to rubble. The holding of at least some Israeli hostages taken on Oct. 7, 2023, was decentralized, and they were distributed to families across the Gaza Strip. There’s a high chance some of these were killed during the heavy Israeli bombardment and buried under the rubble.
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A top U.S. adviser gave the same assessment, speaking with reporters earlier on Wednesday.
“On top of all that debris is a lot of unexploded ordnance, and presumably, under that unexploded ordnance and that debris, there are many bodies,” the adviser explained. “Now, there’s a lot of different intelligence on where someone might have been killed, where they might have been injured, and we’ve got a lot of information with regard to that. And we’ve got a huge, huge effort in understanding all of those things.”
“Now that we have greater control physically of the area, it’s going to allow us to do a lot more with the resources we have there — but we need more resources, and we’re calling on multiple countries and they’re giving us tremendous commitments just recently,” they added.
“Each day we’re getting deceased out,” the top adviser said. “We’re not gonna leave until everyone comes home.”
Israel has already announced plans for retaliatory measures. Lesser options include limiting promised aid, while the most extreme option entails continuing the war. All of this depends on whether Jerusalem and Washington openly view Hamas’s explanation as genuine.
“If Hamas refuses to abide by the agreement, Israel, in coordination with the U.S., will return to fighting and work to completely defeat Hamas, change the reality in Gaza and achieve all the goals of the war,” a Wednesday statement from the office of Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz read.
President Donald Trump holds immense sway over Jerusalem, meaning that any Israeli move that opposes the agreement would have to be made with his blessing. The president has repeatedly praised the agreement as having positive long-term prospects, and its implementation has earned him rare, almost universal, praise from critics.
Three Israeli officials told the New York Times that the peace deal outlined the mechanism for recovering the remaining hostages if Hamas couldn’t immediately locate them. The deal calls for the creation of a joint task force, including the United States and other mediators, to share information about the remains and try to find them. The officials speaking with the outlet said they believe Hamas doesn’t know the locations of all the bodies.
The funerals for the dead turned over by Hamas began on Wednesday. Among the most widely attended was that of Capt. Daniel Peretz, a tank commander who was killed along with two of the four-man crew during the initial Oct. 7 attack. Hamas took his and another crew member’s body into Gaza, while the final tankman, Matan Angrest, was taken alive. Angrest was one of the final hostages released on Monday, but he insisted on being released from the hospital to attend the funeral of his comrade.
“It was important for me to salute and pay final respects to my commander Daniel, of blessed memory, who led our heroic battle on that fateful Saturday,” he said in a eulogy, the New York Times reported.
However, “the circle would only be complete,” he said, when Itay Chen, the final crew member still in Gaza, was returned. He wanted him “laid to rest in Israeli soil, together with all the fallen.”
A sound technician at the Supernova music festival, Guy Iluz, was also buried on Wednesday. He was shot twice in the back by Hamas gunmen and then succumbed to his wounds in a Gaza hospital after not receiving proper medical care. Maya Regev, a released hostage who spent his final days in the hospital with him, spoke at his funeral.
“You suffered a week alone until I arrived,” she wrote on social media on Tuesday. “We spoke about the most simple and pure things in the darkest and most horrific place that man has known.”
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The dead hostage’s father, Michel Iluz, said Regev’s presence had been a gift, a brief moment of respite during his suffering.
“Rest,” he said, “after a journey of two years in worlds unknown to us.”
