Israel does not know the location of four of the remaining 13 bodies of hostages held in Gaza, according to a report Sunday, amid increased pressure on Hamas to resume handing over bodies in accordance with the terms of the ceasefire and hostage deal.
Jerusalem has been trying to impress upon Washington the utmost importance of returning the remaining bodies from the Strip, the Kan public broadcaster reported Sunday, as days have passed without Hamas handing over the remains of any additional deceased hostages.
A string of high-level US officials, including Vice President JD Vance, have visited the region in the past week to shore up the shaky ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
During Vance’s visit, Kan said, IDF Chief of Staff. Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir tried to impress upon him the importance of returning the bodies by telling him that Israel has spent more than a decade trying to locate the remains of Hadar Goldin, a soldier killed in 2014 whose body is one of the 13 that has yet to be recovered.
Hamas claims it has not yet been able to locate the bodies of some of the remaining 13 hostages, and has not returned any bodies since Tuesday, saying it needs assistance in locating and recovering them.
However, Israel is reportedly “certain” the terror group can hand over more bodies but is refusing to do so, and is also holding back information about their location, in a direct breach of the October 9 hostage-ceasefire agreement.
In an effort to speed up the process, teams from the Red Cross and Egypt joined efforts on Sunday to search for remains, with the approval of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Alongside the Egyptian and Red Cross efforts, an unnamed Israeli official told Hebrew-language media that Hamas representatives had been permitted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to enter the IDF-controlled areas in Gaza to search for the bodies.
The Qatari Al-Araby published footage of Hamas members — reportedly from the “Shadow Unit” of the group’s military wing, which is responsible for guarding hostages — together with a Red Cross vehicle in the al-Mawasi area near Rafah, an area that is not under IDF control.
The stepped-up efforts to recover the last 13 bodies came after US President Donald Trump warned on Saturday that Hamas would be to blame if the ceasefire collapsed, and said he would be watching the terror group’s actions “very closely” over the next 48 hours, to ensure that it resumed handing over bodies.
Before the ceasefire, Hamas was holding the bodies of 28 dead hostages. It has since returned 15 of them, along with releasing all 20 surviving hostages, of the 251 total who were abducted during the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, massacre in Israel that precipitated the war in Gaza.
The delay in recovering the deceased hostages did not appear to be the only threat to the fragile ceasefire, however, as a top Hamas leader claimed on Sunday that the terror group would not disarm until the Israeli “occupation” was a thing of the past.
Under the terms of the US-brokered agreement with Israel, Hamas will be expected to disarm and step back from any role in governing Gaza during the second phase of the deal’s implementation.
Israel has also made Hamas’s disarmament a top priority and defined it as one of the main goals that must be met in order to end the two-year war in Gaza.
However, Hamas’s lead negotiator Khalil al-Hayya claimed on Sunday that the terror group’s weapons were “linked to the presence of the occupation and aggression.
“If the occupation ends, these weapons will be transferred to the state,” he insisted.
It was not immediately clear what state the Hamas official was referring to, or whether he was referencing the yet-to-be-formed Palestinian administrative body that will rule Gaza in place of Hamas.
Al-Hayya’s definition of “the occupation” was also unclear, as he did not clarify whether he was referring to Israel’s presence in Gaza and the West Bank or the State of Israel as a whole, given that Palestinians and some Arab nations often simply refer to it as an occupying power.
Trump’s 20-point plan for Gaza requires Hamas to commit to disarmament, but the agreement signed by Israel’s Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer and mediators in Sharm el-Sheikh on October 9 does not address the demand.
Focusing on a separate part of Trump’s vision for Gaza, defense officials were reported to have told Israeli lawmakers last week that the International Stabilization Force, which is intended to take over security of the Gaza Strip once the IDF has withdrawn, will likely include troops from Pakistan.
According to a report on the Ynet news site, members of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee were told during a closed-door briefing last week that the International Stabilization Force will be made up of soldiers from Indonesia, Azerbaijan and Pakistan.
Indonesia has publicly offered to send troops for the effort, and officials have told The Times of Israel that Azerbaijan had also agreed to contribute soldiers.
The potential presence of Pakistani soldiers had not yet been publicized.
