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Benjamin Netanyahu has accused Hamas of a “clear violation” of the US-brokered Gaza ceasefire, saying the militant group had returned body parts of a hostage whose remains Israeli troops had recovered two years before.
Under the terms of the ceasefire, which took effect on 10 October, Hamas is required to return the remains of all Israeli hostages as soon as possible. In exchange, Israel has agreed to hand over 15 Palestinian bodies for each Israeli. Hamas has yet to return 13 bodies.
On Monday, the International Committee of the Red Cross accompanied members of Hamas inside areas of Gaza under the control of the Israeli military to facilitate the search for the bodies, after Donald Trump on Saturday issued a 48-hour ultimatum to return the remains of the dead Israeli hostages ‘‘quickly, or the other countries involved in this great peace will take action”.
In the evening, Hamas’s military wing, the al-Qassam brigades, said it had returned the body of an Israeli captive, with the Israeli government later confirming it had received it from the Red Cross.
However, on Tuesday, the Israeli health ministry’s National Forensic Institute said there was no match with any of the 13 missing bodies, saying the remains belonged to Ofir Tzarfati, whose body was recovered by the IDF in the Gaza Strip in December 2023, less than two months after his abduction.
The news has enraged Israelis, with the far-right ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich lashing out at Hamas and calling on Netanyahu to resume the war.
“The fact that Hamas continues to play games and does not immediately transfer all the bodies of our fallen, is in itself evidence that the terror organisation is still standing,” Ben Gvir, the security minister, said.
“Now we don’t need to ‘extract a price from Hamas’ for the violations. We need to exact from it its very existence and destroy it completely, once and for all, in accordance with the central goal defined for the ‘war of revival’ [war in Gaza],” he said, adding: “Mr Prime Minister, enough hesitation. Give the order.”
Smotrich, the finance minister, wrote to Netanyah calling for “forceful responses” to Hamas’s violations and calling for ‘‘the destruction of Hamas and the removal of the threat emanating from Gaza toward the citizens of Israel”.
Netanyahu said he would convene an emergency meeting on Tuesday to discuss ‘‘possible Israeli reactions to Hamas violations of the first phase of the Gaza ceasefire agreement’’, Israeli media reported.
The Times of Israel said the prime minister was considering moving the yellow line dividing Gaza in two to place more territory under IDF control, or halting the entry of humanitarian aid to Gaza.
Hamas has so far returned the remains of 15 hostages, with 13 bodies still in the territory.
The militant group says it does not know the precise whereabouts of all the bodies, saying it has lost contact with several of its units that had been holding the captives and were reportedly killed during Israeli bombardments.
In a separate development on Tuesday, police said Israeli forces killed three Palestinians they described as members of a “terrorist cell” during a raid near the occupied West Bank city of Jenin.
