The head of the Israeli military said on Monday that Israel’s military campaign in Gaza isn’t over until all the bodies of deceased Israeli hostages are recovered and suggested the “campaign against Hamas” would continue after that.
“The war is not yet over; we must complete our sacred mission of bringing the fallen hostages home and continue the campaign against Hamas,” IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir said at a military conference, according to The Times of Israel.
While there has been a de-escalation in Gaza, Israeli forces have continued launching attacks since the ceasefire deal was signed on October 10, killing at least 95 Palestinians in that time, according to numbers from Gaza’s Health Ministry, and the IDF currently controls about 58% of Gaza’s territory. Comments from President Trump have also made clear that Israeli officials are eager to restart the full-scale genocidal campaign, and would do so if he gave the word.
Zamir’s comments came on the same day that Hamas returned another Israeli body, leaving a total of 12 deceased hostages under the rubble in Gaza. Israel has handed over at least 195 Palestinian bodies to Gaza in exchange, including many that could not be identified and were buried in a mass grave.
It was clear when Israel signed the ceasefire deal that recovering all of the Israeli bodies would take time, but the Israeli government attempted to use Hamas’s lack of access to all of the hostage remains to blow up the deal, and continues to claim that the Palestinian group is delaying the process. But Hamas has continued to expand its efforts, and reportedly entered Israeli-controlled parts of Gaza with the International Committee of the Red Cross to search for remains on Monday.
According to the Israeli news site Ynet, Hamas has conveyed that it has located the remains of seven to nine Israeli bodies and is working to excavate them. The report also said that Israel is asking the US for permission to expand its occupation of Gaza to expand its occupation of Gaza as a “sanction” against Hamas for the time it is taking to find the bodies.
