The Palestinian terrorist group Hamas said on Friday it was investigating a possible error in identifying human remains handed to Israel under a ceasefire deal as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened retaliation for failing to release the body of hostage Shiri Bibas.

Hamas was due to hand over the bodies of Shiri Bibas and her two sons Kfir and Ariel on Thursday, along with the remains of a fourth hostage under the ceasefire deal that has halted fighting in Gaza since last month.

Four bodies were delivered and the identities of the Bibas boys and the other hostage, Oded Lifshitz, were confirmed.

But Israeli specialists said the fourth body was that of an unidentified woman and not Bibas, who was kidnapped along with her sons and her husband, Yarden, during the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Basem Naim, a member of the Hamas political bureau, said “unfortunate mistakes” could occur, especially as Israeli bombing had mixed the bodies of Israeli hostages and Palestinians, thousands of whom were still buried in the rubble.

“We confirm that it is not in our values or our interest to keep any bodies or not to abide by the covenants and agreements that we sign,” he said in a statement.

Hamas said separately that it would investigate the Israeli assertions and announce the results.

The failure to hand over the body and the staged public handover of the four coffins on Thursday, caused outrage in Israel and drew a threat of retaliation from Netanyahu.

“The cruelty of the Hamas monsters knows no bounds. Not only did they kidnap the father, Yarden Bibas, the young mother, Shiri, and their two small babies. In an unspeakably cynical manner, they did not return Shiri to her little children, the little angels, and they put the body of a Gazan woman in a coffin,” Netanyahu said in a video statement.

“We will act with determination to bring Shiri home along with all our hostages – both living and dead – and ensure Hamas pays the full price for this cruel and evil violation of the agreement,” he continued, adding that “God will avenge [the deceased hostages’] blood.

Hamas said in November 2023 that the children and their mother had been killed in an Israeli air strike and Ismail Al-Thawabta, director of the Hamas-run Gaza government media office, said Netanyahu “bears full responsibility for killing her and her children.”

But the Israeli military said intelligence assessments and forensic analysis of the bodies of the Bibas children indicated that they were deliberately killed by their captors. Chief military spokesperson Daniel Hagari said the boys were killed by the terrorists “with their bare hands,” but gave no details.

Netanyahu gave no details of a possible Israeli response, but the incident underscored the fragility of the ceasefire agreement reached with US backing and with the help of Qatari and Egyptian mediators last month.

SATURDAY EXCHANGE

Six living hostages are due for release on Saturday in exchange for 602 Palestinian prisoners and detainees, according to Hamas, and the start of negotiations for a second phase of the ceasefire is expected in the coming days.

“Hamas must return the hostages as agreed in the ceasefire – the living and the deceased,” Israeli military spokesperson Nadav Shoshani said in a statement on social media platform X. “They have to bring Shiri back, and they have to release the 6 living hostages expected tomorrow.”

Netanyahu’s office confirmed it had been officially informed of the names of the six hostages to be released, which Hamas sources said was expected at around 8.30 am (0630 GMT).

As the tension over the Gaza ceasefire rose, Netanyahu ordered the Israeli military to intensify operations in another Palestinian territory, the West Bank, after a number of explosions blew up buses standing empty in their depots near Tel Aviv.

No casualties were reported but the explosions were a reminder of the campaign of suicide attacks on public transport that killed hundreds of Israeli civilians during the Second Intifada in the early 2000s.

‘THEY MAKE A JOKE OF US’

Both sides have repeatedly accused the other of ceasefire violations, with Hamas threatening to delay the release of hostages over what it said was Israel‘s refusal to allow housing materials and other aid into Gaza, a charge Israel denied.

“It’s like they make a joke of us,” said 75-year-old Ilana Caspi. “We are so in grief and this is even more, it’s like you make a punch again, another one and another one, it’s really terrible.”

The Red Cross told Reuters it was “concerned and unsatisfied” by the fact that the handover of the bodies had not been conducted privately and in a dignified manner.

One of the main groups representing hostage families said they were “horrified and devastated” by the news that Shiri Bibas’ body had not been returned but called for the ceasefire to continue to bring back all the 70 hostages still in Gaza.

“Save them from this nightmare,” the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said in a statement.

Despite the outrage over Shiri Bibas, there was no indication that Israel would not take part in talks over a second phase of the ceasefire deal.

The Israel Hayom newspaper reported that Israeli negotiators were considering seeking an extension of the 42-day ceasefire, to delay moving to a second phase, which would involve talks over hard-to-resolve issues including an end to the war and the future of Hamas in Gaza.

The post Hamas Says It Is Investigating Possible Error Over Hostage Body as Israel Decries Terror Group’s ‘Cruelty’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

The Israeli military said on Friday that one of the bodies released by Hamas did not belong to any of the hostages held in Gaza, accusing the Palestinian terrorist group of violating an already fragile ceasefire.

Two of the bodies were identified as infant Kfir Bibas and his four-year-old brother Ariel, while a third body that was supposed to be their mother, Shiri, was found not to match with any hostage and remained unidentified, the military said.

“This is a violation of utmost severity by the Hamas terrorist organization, which is obliged under the agreement to return four deceased hostages,” the military said, in a statement, demanding the return of Shiri and all hostages.

The family of hostage Oded Lifshitz, said in a statement that his body had been formally identified.

Hamas said on Friday it was investigating a possible error in identifying human remains handed to Israel under the ceasefire deal.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier vowed revenge on Hamas after the group released the remains of what it said were four hostages, including that of Kfir and Ariel, the youngest of those abducted during the Oct. 7, 2023, attack.

Palestinian militants handed over four black coffins in a carefully orchestrated public display as a crowd of Palestinians and dozens of armed Hamas terrorists watched, creating a spectacle which was condemned by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

The purported remains of the boys, their mother, and Lifshitz, were handed over under the Gaza ceasefire agreement reached last month with the backing of the United States and the mediation of Qatar and Egypt.

Israelis lined the road in the rain near the Gaza border to pay their respects as the convoy carrying the coffins drove by.

“We stand here together, with a broken heart. The sky is also crying with us, and we pray to see better days,” said one woman, who gave her name only as Efrat.

In Tel Aviv, people gathered, some weeping, in a public square opposite Israel‘s defense headquarters that has come to be known as Hostages Square.

“Agony. Pain. There are no words. Our hearts — the hearts of an entire nation — lie in tatters,” said President Isaac Herzog.

In a recorded address released after the remains of the hostages were handed over, Netanyahu vowed to eliminate Hamas, saying “the four coffins” obliged Israel to ensure “more than ever” that there was no repeat of the Oct. 7 attack.

“Our loved ones’ blood is shouting at us from the soil and is obliging us to settle the score with the despicable murderers, and we will,” he said.

Over the course of the 16-month-old conflict, Israeli officials have repeatedly asserted that Hamas would be destroyed and the roughly 250 hostages abducted during the October 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel would be returned home.

During Thursday’s handover, one terrorist stood beside a poster showing coffins wrapped in Israeli flags. It read “The Return of the War = The Return of your Prisoners in Coffins.”

UN chief Guterres condemned “the parading of bodies and displaying of the coffins of the deceased hostages in the manner seen this morning, which is abhorrent and appalling,” his spokesperson, Stephane Dujarric, said.

He said international law required remains to be handed over in a way that ensures “respect for the dignity of the deceased and their families.”

‘SYMBOL’

Kfir Bibas was nine months old when the Bibas family, including their father Yarden, was abducted at Kibbutz Nir Oz, one of a string of communities near Gaza that were overrun by Hamas-led attackers from Gaza.

Hamas said in November 2023 that the boys and their mother had been killed in an Israeli airstrike, but their deaths were not confirmed by Israeli authorities.

“Shiri and the kids became a symbol,” said Yiftach Cohen, of the Nir Oz kibbutz, which lost around a quarter of its residents, either killed or kidnapped, during the assault.

Yarden Bibas was returned alive in an exchange for prisoners this month.

Lifshitz was 83 when he was abducted from Nir Oz, the kibbutz he helped found. His wife, Yocheved, 85 at the time, was seized with him and released two weeks later, along with another woman.

He was a former journalist and in an op-ed in left-leaning Haaretz in January 2019, he listed what he said were Netanyahu’s policy failures.

LIVING HOSTAGES

The handover marked the first return of dead bodies during the current agreement.

The military said that the Bibas children had been murdered in captivity in November 2023 by “terrorists.” The prime minister’s office earlier said that Lifshitz was murdered in captivity by Islamic Jihad, another Iran-backed terrorist group in Gaza.

Chen Kugel, the head of the Israel National Center of Forensic Medicine, later said in a televised statement that Lifshitz had been murdered more than a year ago.

The Hamas-led attack into Israel killed some 1,200 people, and 251 individuals were kidnapped as hostages. Israel‘s subsequent military campaign aimed to free the hostages and dismantle Hamas’s military and governing capabilities in Gaza.

Thursday’s handover of bodies will be followed by the return of six living hostages on Saturday, in exchange for hundreds more Palestinians, expected to be women and minors detained by Israeli forces in Gaza during the war.

Negotiations for a second phase, expected to cover the return of around 60 remaining hostages, less than half of whom are believed to be alive, and a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip to allow an end to the war, are expected to begin in the coming days.

The post Israeli Military Says Hostage Body Released by Hamas Is Not Shiri Bibas or Any Other Captive in Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Members of the Hamas terrorist group lambasted US President Donald Trump’s recent proposal to remove Palestinian civilians from the Gaza strip as a “bull— plan.” 

The remarks were made during what appears to be a rally in the Khan Yunis town of southern Gaza celebrating the transfer of the bodies of four hostages—Ariel Bibas, Kfir Bibas, Shiri Bibas, and Oded Lifshitz—back to Israel after they had been murdered by Hamas. In the video, a large crowd was circled around a dirt pit, attentively listening to a leader of the terrorist group both criticized Trump as an “unleashed bull” and promise that future generations of Palestinians would continue fighting against Israel. 

Hamas erected a large banner depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a blood-drenched vampire superimposed on pictures of the Bibas family and Lifshitz. Thousands of Palestinian civilians assembled to partake in the event, shouting chants of victory. 

“Do you really think that boy that attacked a tank barefooted with his bayonet and IED will leave his homeland because of fear?” the terrorist member said, “What do you think might frighten us? We’ve made very good friends with death lately.”

The Hamas member warned Trump to “think twice” about his proposal to vacate Gaza civilians from the war-torn strip, arguing that the terrorist group is capable of “delivering” death to its opponents. 

“The war criminal Netanyahu & his Nazi Army killed them with missiles from Zionist warplanes,” the banner read. 

Earlier this month, Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was visiting the White House, held a press conference following their private meeting in the Oval Office. Trump asserted that the US would assume control of Gaza and develop it economically into “the Riviera of the Middle East” after Palestinians are resettled elsewhere.

“The US will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it too,” Trump told reporters. “We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site.”

Trump has also referred to Gaza as a “demolition site” and said its residents have “no alternative” but to leave, suggesting Egypt, Jordan, and other Arab states as possible relocation sites. 

Trump has called for Egypt, Jordan, and other Arab states in the region to take in Palestinians from Gaza. Thus far, every state in the region has refused to absorb Palestinian migrants from Gaza. 

 

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