Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday that Israel would force Hamas to pay for not letting the body of the Shiri Bibas hostage as agreed.
“We will behave with the determination to bring Shiri home together with all our hostages – and I live and dead – and ensure that Hamas pays the full price for this cruel and evil violation of the agreement,” he said in the video.
The statement came after Israeli experts said that one of the four bodies Hamas handed over Thursday was an unidentified woman, not Shiri Bibas, whose two sons, Kfir and Ariel were committed and identified.
Netanyahu accused Hamas of playing “in an unspeakable cynical way” putting the body of a woman in a coffin instead of Shiri Bibas, who was abducted with her two sons and her husband Yarden, during the attack of Hamas on Israel on OCT. 7, 2023.
Netanyahu did not give details about the possible Israeli response, but the incident emphasized the fragility of the fire interruption agreement with American support and with the help of Qatar and Egyptian mediator last month.
6 hostages to be released, says Hamas
Ismail Al-Thawabt, director of the Government Media Hamas Media Office, said that the remains of Shiri Bibasa were mixed with other human remains after being buried in the ruins of the building destroyed in the Israeli air attack.
In November 2023, Hamas said that the children and their mother were killed in the Israeli air attack. The Israeli army said that intelligence assessments and forensic analysis of Bibas’ children’s body indicated that their kidnappers had been intentionally killed.
The Israelites gathered in Tel Aviv on Thursday because the bodies of four hostages – including two children – returned to Israel from Gaza, in what one man described as a “saddest day” of the deadly 7th October 2023, the attack of Hamas militants militants .
It is not clear whether the mixup will endanger the start of the negotiations for the second phase of the tribute, which was expected in the coming days.
Hamas said he was planning to release six hostages, everyone lives, as originally planned for Saturday.
The armed wing of the militant group Hamas said it would publish Israeli hostage Eliya Cohen, Omer SHEM TOV, Tal Shoham, Omer Wenkert, Hisham al-Sayed and Avera Menongisto on Saturday.
Hisham al-Sayed and Avera Menongisto were civilians, who entered Gaza ten years ago and held them there.
Red Cross, a group with hostages of a family condemns the mixup
The Red Cross told Reuters on Friday that he was “worried and dissatisfied with” the way the Hamas hostage operations occurred.
“ICRC does not participate in the sorting, rehearsal or testing of the deceased – this is the responsibility of the parties to the conflict,” the statement said on Friday, at the same time expressing concerns that issues were not carried out privately and aua a dignified way.
Failure to return to Shiri Bibasa and an styled public handover of four coffins on Thursday caused anger in Israel.
“It’s like joking us,” said 75-year-old Ilan Caspi. “That’s how we’re in sadness and this is even more. It’s like making a shot again, another and another. It’s really scary.”
One of the main groups representing families with hostages said they were “terrified and ravaged” by the news that the Shiri Bibasa body was not returned, but invited the truce to continue returning all 70 hostages in Gaza.
“Save them from this nightmare,” the hostage and missing families state.
As the tension over Gaza stopped the fire, Netanyahu ordered the Israeli army to enhance surgery on the second Palestinian territory, occupied by the west coast, after numerous explosions were blowing buses that stood empty in their warehouses near Tel Aviv.
The victims were not reported, but the explosion was a reminder of the campaign of suicide attacks on public transport in which hundreds of Israeli civilians were killed during the second intifada in the early 2000s.
