Israel Pressures Hamas to Return Bodies, but Gaza’s Destruction Poses Challenge

Israeli officials and hostage families have accused Hamas of violating the new cease-fire deal by failing to immediately return the remains of many of the former captives still in Gaza.

The truce agreement called for the immediate handover of all remaining bodies in Gaza, but acknowledged that some could be difficult to locate and may take more time to retrieve because of the destruction. Gaza was highly urbanized before the war, but two years of Israeli strikes have turned large parts of it into a flattened landscape of cement rubble.

On Monday, Hamas returned only four bodies out of the roughly two dozen remaining, angering Israelis who had been expecting many more to come home. But late Tuesday night, the Israeli military said it had been informed that the Red Cross received four more coffins with the remains of hostages.

A statement from the prime minister’s office around midnight said that Israeli forces had received those remains and that they were being transferred to Israel for identification. After the identification process, families will be notified, it said.

The Israeli government has been weighing measures to penalize Hamas for not turning over more bodies, according to two diplomats briefed by Israeli officials and three Israeli officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive topics.