Gaza latest: Israeli hostage families demand ceasefire be terminated if bodies not returned by Hamas

The remains of the two Israeli hostages returned by Hamas last night have been identified by the National Center for Forensic Medicine.

The officials confirmed that Inbar Hayman and Muhammad al-Atarash were the two deceased hostages returned to Israel, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said today.

“The government of Israel shares in the deep sorrow of the families of Hayman and al-Atarash and all the families of the fallen abductees,” it added.

Hamas claims it cannot locate the remaining bodies without access to the specialist equipment needed to reach certain areas.

Under the first stage of the Gaza peace plan, Hamas is obligated to return all 28 deceased hostages.

Marwan Barghouti, the most popular leader for Palestinians who is currently in an Israeli jail, was beaten unconscious by Israeli prison guards, his son has said.

Arab Barghouti cited evidence given by Palestinian detainees released this week in the ceasefire deal.

According to that information, his 66-year-old father was attacked by eight guards on 14 September while being transferred between Ganot and Megiddo prisons.

“What we know is that while they were transferring my father, they stopped along the way and eight security guards within the prison authority that worked for the prison authority started beating my father up in different ways, by kicking him, by [throwing] him on the ground, by punching him, focusing on the head area, chest area and legs as well,” he said according to The Guardian.

Mr Barghouti could barely walk for days, the released detainees said, after what his son said was the fourth time his father had been beaten over the past two years.

UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese said on X: “I fear for the life of Marwan Barghouti. Reports say Israeli guards beat him unconscious.”

She called on the Red Cross to be allowed to visit Mr Barghouti to verify his condition.

Mr Barghouti has been in solitary confinement since the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023. He has been in prison for more than 20 years after being convicted of planning attacks which led to five civilians being killed, in a trial described as flawed by the Inter-Parliamentary Union, which questioned the quality of the evidence.

Sirens were activated in Israel’s Red Sea city of Eilat after the suspected hostile infiltration of an aircraft, the Israeli military said on Thursday,

It was later confirmed to be a ‘false identification’.

Israel will achieve all goals of the Gaza war it had set out to accomplish, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday.

Speaking at a state ceremony for fallen soldiers during the two-year conflict with militant group Hamas, Netanyahu also said Israel’s enemies learned that anyone who lifts a hand against it will pay a heavy price.

The families of Israeli hostages and captives have demanded that the ceasefire with Hamas be terminated if the 19 bodies remaining in Gaza are not returned.

“While Hamas continues to violate the agreement and still holds 19 hostages captive, there is no justification for any unilateral concessions by Israel,” the Hostage Families Forum Headquarters said in a statement.

“The agreement cannot continue to be implemented without Hamas returning all the hostages,” it added.

“Any decision that weakens pressure on Hamas or allows the agreement to continue while hostages remain unreturned would be a grave moral and leadership failure.”

Hamas has said that it has returned all the reachable bodies to Israel.

Before the ceasefire took effect, it was understood that a number of hostage bodies were buried under the rubble in Gaza and would not be easy to locate. An international team is working to help find the remaining bodies in the enclave.

Greta Thunberg claims she was “hit and kicked” while in Israeli custody after she was detained from her Gaza aid flotilla.

The young Swedish activist has accused Israeli guards of having “no empathy or humanity”, recalled seeing dozens of people in handcuffs with their foreheads on the grounds, and says she had to “beg” for water while in 40C heat.

Thunberg also claimed Israeli guards wrote the words “whore” and drew images of a penis and the Star of David on her suitcase. Israeli has hit back at the activist and claimed her allegations are “ludicrous and baseless”.

The 22 year-old was detained after attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza in a breach of Israel’s naval blockade of the flattened enclave. She was deported on 6 October.

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Hamas says the remains of all dead hostages that it can reach have been handed back to Israel, after the militant group returned two more bodies on Wednesday.

Under the first phase of the Gaza peace plan, Hamas is obliged to return all 28 deceased hostages. If the two bodies are confirmed to be hostages, 19 would still remain unaccounted for in Gaza.

The militant group’s armed wing said in a statement that Hamas had “fulfilled its commitment to the agreement by handing over all living Israeli prisoners in its custody, as well as the corpses it could access”.

“The remaining bodies require significant efforts and specialised equipment to search for and retrieve, and we are making a great effort to close this file”.