Hamas has today handed over two of six Israeli hostages due to be freed from the Gaza Strip, as the body of murdered mother-of-two Shiri Bibas was handed back to her grieving family following a vile mix-up.
Tal Shoham and Avera Mengistu have been handed over to the Red Cross, after being paraded on stage by masked gunmen, as we have seen in previous handovers.
The six Israeli men set for release today are expected to be the last living hostages freed during the ceasefire’s first phase.
They include Eliya Cohen, 27; Omer Shem Tov, 22; and Omer Wenkert, 23. All three were abducted from a music festival during the Oct. 7 attack. Tal Shoham, 40, who was taken from the community of Kibbutz Beeri, is also set to be released.
On top of these four men, Avera Mengistu, 39, and Hisham Al-Sayed, 36, who have been held since crossing into Gaza on their own years ago, are set to be released.
Three white vehicles have arrived at the site of the ceremony in Rafah, and two female representatives from the Red Cross were seen on the stage signing papers.
It comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed retribution after what he called ‘a cruel and malicious violation’ of the agreement by misidentifying bodies.
The family of Shiri Bibas said Israeli forensic authorities had confirmed the remains released overnight are those of the Israeli mother.
Israeli authorities said they had positively identified the bodies of Bibas’s two young sons, Kfir and Ariel Bibas, and of Oded Lifshitz, but that the fourth body was an unidentified woman from Gaza.
However, amid the already tense hostage exchange, the IDF has accused Hamas of murdering siblings Ariel and Kfir ‘with their bare hands’.
‘For 16 months we sought certainty, and now that it’s here, it brings no comfort, though we hope it marks the beginning of closure,’ the Bibas family said.
The Foreign Secretary, David Lammy has called Hamas’s failure to return the right body of an Israeli hostage ‘sick and abhorrent’.
Israel said its tests determined that the hostages had been killed by their captors. Hamas has claimed Lifshitz and the members of the Bibas family were killed in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza.
Hamas said it would ‘conduct a thorough review’ of information regarding the body and suggested that Israeli bombing of the area where hostages were held might have caused a mix-up of remains.
The group’s military wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, said it would go ahead with the release of the six Israeli hostages planned for Saturday.
The dispute over the body’s identity raised new doubt about the ceasefire deal, which has paused over 15 months of war but is nearing the end of its first phase. Negotiations over a second phase, in which Hamas would release dozens more hostages in exchange for a lasting ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal, are likely to be even more difficult.
On Saturday morning, hundreds of people gathered in a rainy Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip as Hamas prepared to release the hostages.
More than 600 Palestinians jailed in Israel will be freed in exchange, the Palestinian prisoners media office said Friday. The prisoners set for release include 50 serving life sentences, 60 with long sentences, 47 who were released under a previous hostage-for-prisoner exchange and 445 prisoners from Gaza arrested since the war began.
Hamas has said it will also release four more bodies next week, completing the first phase of the ceasefire. If that plan is carried out, Hamas would retain about 60 hostages, about half of whom are believed to be alive.
Hamas has said it won’t release the remaining captives without a lasting ceasefire and a full Israeli withdrawal. Netanyahu, with the full backing of the Trump administration, says he’s committed to destroying Hamas’ military and governing capacities and returning all the hostages, goals widely seen as mutually exclusive.
Trump’s proposal to remove about 2 million Palestinians from Gaza so the U.S. can own and rebuild it has thrown the ceasefire into further doubt. His idea has been welcomed by Netanyahu but universally rejected by Palestinians and Arab countries.
Trump said Friday that he was ‘a little surprised’ by rejections of the proposal by Egypt and Jordan and that he would not impose it.
‘I’ll tell you, the way to do it is my plan. I think that’s the plan that really works. But I’m not forcing it. I’m just going to sit back and recommend it,’ Trump said in a Fox News interview.
Israel’s military offensive killed more than 48,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants. Israel says it has killed more than 17,000 fighters, without providing evidence.
The offensive destroyed vast areas of Gaza, reducing entire neighborhoods to rubble. At its height, the war displaced 90% of Gaza’s population. Many have returned to their homes to find nothing left and no way of rebuilding.
