On Thursday, Hamas announced the bodies of four Israeli hostages, said to include their mother and her two children who have long been afraid of the dead and that they came to embody the nation’s agony after October 7, 2023.
The remains of Shiri Bibas and her two children, Ariel and Kfir, were said to be the remains of Shiri Bibas, as well as Oded Lifshitz, who was 83 years old when he was abducted. Kfir, who was nine months old when they took him, was the youngest prisoner. Hamas said all four were killed with their guards at Israeli air attacks.
The Red Cross vehicles flew away from the handover of the gauze with four black coffins set on stage. Each of the suitcases had a small picture of hostages.
Hamas handed over the bodies under the termination of the Gaza fire to interrupt last month with the support of the United States and the mediation of Qatar and Egypt.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a brief video that he would be “a very difficult day for the state of Israel on Thursday. An upsetting day, a day of sadness.”
Hundreds of people gathered in the winter cold ahead of the handover at Khan Younis in southern Gazi. Armed Hamas militants in black and camouflage uniforms visited the area.
One militant stood by the posters of a man standing over the coffins wrapped in the Israeli flag. Instead of legs, he had treets of trees in the ground, suggesting that the earth belongs to the Palestinians. The poster read “The return of war = the return of your prisoners in the coffins.”
The Bibas family, including their father Yarden, was abducted in Kibbutz Nir Oz, one of a series of communities near Gaza, overlooked on October 7th by attackers led by Hamas from Gaza.
In November 2023, Hamas said the guys and their mother were killed in Israeli air attack, but the Israeli authorities never confirmed their death and even in the last moment, some refused to accept that they were dead.
“Shiri and children have become a symbol,” said Yiftach Cohen, a resident of Nir Oz, who lost about a quarter of his inhabitants during the attack on October 7th, had been killed or abducted. “I still hope they will be alive.”
The father was released earlier
Yarden Bibas was returned this month in an earlier hostage exchange for prisoners. But the family said this week that their “journey is not over” until they received a final certificate of what happened to the boys and their mother.
“Let’s wake up a hard morning for all of us. The morning that sharpens the cruelty of our enemies and justice of our decisive war against them until they destroy them from the face of the earth,” said Israeli Finance Minister Besalel Festival in Post on the X platform of social media.
A large poster was hung at the place of handover, showing Netanyahu as a vampire standing in the pictures of four hostages. “The war criminal Netanyahu and his Nazi army were killed by rockets from the Zionist war planes,” the poster read.
After handover, the remains will be moved to the coffins drawn in the Israeli flag, and the military rabbi will be provided to a short ceremony. He will then take to Israel to the National Forensic Institute that will be identified, a process that could take several hours or even for several days.
Only after the identification will the official announcement of their death and funeral be announced.
Identities have not been confirmed
The coast marks the first return of dead bodies during the current agreement, and it is not expected that Israel will confirm its identity until it is completed by the DNA’s full check.
Despite the accusations on both sides for breaking the interruption of fire, the fragile agreement that entered into force on January 19 was held from the first in a series of hostages in Gaza for Palestinian prisoners and detainees held by Israel.
Netanyahu confronted the criticism of his ultimate right -wing coalition allies for objection to an agreement, for which some of them feel the Hamas reward and leave a militant group at the Gaza site.
But a consecutive survey showed broad support from the public for a truce, and thousands of Israelites took place on the streets to demand that the government be complied with the agreement until all the remaining hostages are returned.
Israel attacked the coastal enclave after an attack on the Hamas on the community in Israel on October 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people, according to the Talties Israeli and took 251 as hostage.
The Israeli military campaign that followed killed more than 48,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, destroyed many of his buildings and left most of the homeless population.
More hostages to let go
On Thursday, the return of six living hostages will follow on Saturday, in exchange for hundreds of more Palestinians, who are expected to be women and minors who have detained the Israeli forces in Gaza during the war.
According to the fire interruption agreement, Hamas agreed to release 33 hostages in exchange for almost 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees in the first phase of the agreement intended to open the road to the end of the Gaza war.
So far, 19 Israeli hostages have been published, as well as five Thais who have been returned in unpaid handover.
Negotiations for the second phase, which are expected to cover the return of about 60 remaining hostages, which are believed to be less than half, and it is expected that the complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza’s belt will be able to end the war, you are expected to start in the coming days .
