Hamas handed over more bodies of deceased hostages after Israel threatened to reduce aid into Gaza yesterday and US President Donald Trump threatened violence against the Palestinian fighter group if it does not disarm.
A day after Trump spoke in Jerusalem, touting his plan to end the war, Hamas’ re-emergent fighters executed men in the street and Israel told the United Nations it will allow only half the daily number agreed in last week’s ceasefire deal.
Israeli officials said Israel had decided to restrict aid and delay plans to open the southern border crossing to Egypt because Hamas had violated the ceasefire deal by failing to turn over bodies of hostages who had died after being captured in Hamas’s invasion of Israel in October 2023.
Hours later, Hamas informed mediators it will transfer four bodies to Israel from 1900 GMT, an official involved in the operation told Reuters.
Later, the Israeli military said the Red Cross had received four coffins from Hamas and was on the way to hand over the remains to Israeli forces.
“The search for human remains is obviously an even bigger challenge than having the people alive being released. That’s a massive challenge,” ICRC spokesperson Christian Cardon said at a Geneva press briefing.
“I think there is clearly a risk that that will take much more time. What we are telling the parties is that that should be their top priority,” he said yesterday.
The Geneva-based ICRC said it is providing an additional 23 staff, body bags and refrigerated vehicles to ensure the deceased are handled with respect and dignity within Gaza.
Cardon declined to discuss further details about the possible whereabouts of the deceased hostages, citing the sensitivity of the ongoing operation.
He praised the fact that the handover of the 20 living hostages on Monday was done discreetly, without a repeat of the Hamas-directed hostage release ceremonies of previous transfers.
Israel’s two-year assault has left much of the enclave in ruins.
Yesterday, Hamas said Israel was killing people in Gaza and violating the ceasefire.
Trump suggested Hamas was reneging on its promise to return the dead, and threatened the group with violence.
“If they don’t disarm, we will disarm them,” Trump told reporters in Washington after returning from his weekend trip to the Middle East. “And it will happen quickly and perhaps violently.”
Trump said he communicated this to Hamas and they had agreed to disarm, as his 20-point peace proposal stated.
“I spoke to Hamas, and I said, you’re going to disarm, right? Yes, sir, we’re going to disarm. That’s what they told me,” Trump said, later clarifying that he passed the message through intermediaries.
The outlook for Trump’s peace plan has darkened since he returned from a visit to Israel and Egypt on Monday.
Israel restricted aid into Gaza and kept the enclave’s border shut yesterday, while re-emergent Hamas fighters demonstrated their grip by executing men in the street.
Trump endorsed Hamas killing members of other gangs as it reasserts its grip on security.
Hamas, which seized Gaza in a brief 2007 civil war, has swiftly reclaimed the streets of Gaza’s urban areas following the partial withdrawal of Israeli troops last week.
In a video circulated late on Monday, Hamas fighters dragged seven men with hands tied behind their backs into a Gaza City square, forced them to their knees and shot them from behind, as dozens of onlookers watched from nearby store fronts.
A Hamas source confirmed that the video was filmed on Monday and that Hamas fighters participated in the executions.
Reuters was able to confirm the location by visible geographic features.
Trump has previously given his blessing to Hamas to reassert some control of Gaza, at least temporarily. Israeli officials have so far refrained from commenting publicly on the re-emergence of the group’s fighters.
On Monday, Trump proclaimed the “historic dawn of a new Middle East” to Israel’s parliament, as Israel and Hamas were exchanging the last 20 living Israeli hostages in Gaza for nearly 2,000 Palestinian detainees and prisoners.
Before the latest hostage bodies were handed over to the Red Cross, Hamas had handed over four coffins of dead hostages, leaving at least 23 presumed dead and one unaccounted for, still in the Gaza Strip.
Gaza residents said Hamas fighters were increasingly visible yesterday, deploying along routes needed for aid deliveries.
Palestinian security officials said dozens of people had been killed in clashes between Hamas fighters and rivals in recent days.
Meanwhile, Israel, using aerial drones, killed five Palestinians as they went to check on houses in a suburb east of Gaza City, and an Israeli air strike killed one person and injured another near Khan Younis, Gaza health authorities said.
Hamas accused Israel of violating the ceasefire. The Israeli military said it had fired on people who crossed truce lines and approached its forces after ignoring calls to turn back.
A summit co-hosted by Trump in Egypt on Monday ended with no public announcement of major progress towards establishing an international military force for Gaza, or a new governing body.
Gaza City and surrounding areas are suffering from a famine that has afflicted more than half a million Palestinians, but aid trucks have yet to be permitted to enter Gaza at the full anticipated rate of hundreds per day.
Plans have yet to be implemented to open the crossing to Egypt to let some Gazans out, initially to evacuate the wounded for medical treatment.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has maintained that the war cannot end until Hamas surrenders its weapons and cedes control of Gaza, a demand the fighters have rejected.
Hamas sources told Reuters the group would tolerate no more violations of order in Gaza and would target collaborators, armed looters and drug dealers.
The group, though greatly weakened after two years of Israeli bombardment and ground incursions, has been gradually reasserting itself since the ceasefire took hold.
It has deployed hundreds of workers to start clearing rubble on routes needed to access damaged or destroyed housing, and to repair broken water pipes.
Road clearance and security provision will also be needed for increased aid delivery.
The ceasefire has stopped two years of devastating warfare in Gaza triggered by the October 7, 2023 attack in which Hamas-led gunmen killed around 1,200 people and took 251 hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s military has killed at least 67,000 people in Gaza according to local health authorities, with thousands more feared dead under the rubble. Gaza’s Civil Defence Service said 250 bodies had been recovered since the truce began.
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