Two senior US officials said on Wednesday that Hamas was not violating the Gaza ceasefire deal, pushing back on Israeli claims that the Palestinian group was in violation of the agreement because it didn’t immediately release all of the bodies of deceased Israeli hostages.
Hamas said on Wednesday that it has released all the remains of Israeli captives that it could access and that the rest need to be recovered from the rubble. Before the ceasefire deal was signed, Israeli officials acknowledged that some of the bodies may not be found, and the agreement established a mechanism for information sharing on the process of retrieving the remains.
“We’ve heard a lot of people saying, well, you know, Hamas violated the deal because not all the bodies have been returned. I think the understanding we had with them was we get all the live hostage hostages out, which they did honor that,” an adviser to President Trump told reporters.
“And right now, we have a mechanism in place where we’re working closely with the mediators and with them to do our best to get as many bodies out as possible,” the official added.
A second US adviser said that the 72-hour period Hamas had to release the living hostages wasn’t enough time to retrieve the bodies. “In a 72-hour ceasefire period, I think it would have been almost impossible for Hamas to mobilize, even if they knew where all the 28 bodies were, to mobilize and get them home,” the official said.
The US official said that other countries were offering to help retrieve the bodies and that the US was considering offering rewards to Palestinians in Gaza. There are about 10,000 Palestinians who have been reported missing in Gaza who are presumed dead under the rubble. “On top of all that debris is a lot of unexploded ordinance, and presumably, under that… there are many bodies,” the second US official said.
So far, Hamas has released nine out of 28 of the bodies. Israel has reportedly reversed its threat to halve the number of aid trucks entering Gaza and is expected to open the Rafah crossing on Thursday, though at this point it remains unclear how much aid is actually entering the Strip. Cutting aid is a clear violation of the ceasefire deal, and Israeli troops also continue to kill Palestinians in Gaza.
Israel has also sent the remains of about 45 unidentified Palestinians into Gaza. According to a report from Middle East Eye, the bodies show signs of torture, execution, and being run over by tanks.
