Israel calls Hamas’ return of partial remains of previously recovered hostage “clear violation” of peace deal

Israel’s government said Tuesday that a set of partial hostage remains returned by Hamas the previous day belonged to a deceased hostage recovered by the military around two years ago, not one of those whose remains are still missing in Gaza. The prime minister’s office called it a violation of the U.S.-brokered peace deal, and said it was considering its response.

“After completing the identification process this morning, it was found that last night remains belonging to the fallen hostage Ofir Tzarfati, who had been returned from the Gaza Strip in a military operation about two years ago, were returned,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said.

“This constitutes a clear violation of the [Gaza peace] agreement” by Hamas, Netanyahu’s office said, adding that the prime minister would meet with the heads of Israel’s defense establishment, “during which Israel’s steps in response to the violations will be discussed.”

Israeli media reported the meeting between Netanyahu and his top security chiefs had concluded without any firm decisions taken about next steps. Veteran journalist Barak Ravid, with Israel’s Channel 12, said Netanyahu had told his senior aides that any response would have to be discussed with the Trump administration.

An Israeli group campaigning for the release of hostages held in Gaza urged authorities to “act decisively” against Hamas, accusing the U.S.- and Israeli-designated terrorist group of violating the peace deal brokered by President Trump by returning only the partial remains of the previously recovered hostage, Tzarfati, rather than one of the 13 whose bodies remain in Gaza.

“In light of Hamas’ severe breach of the agreement last night … the Israeli government cannot and must not ignore this, and must act decisively against these violations,” the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, which represents many of the hostage families, said in a statement.

The forum has urged Israel’s leaders to declare Hamas in breach of the peace deal since it started handing over the remains of 28 deceased hostages that had been held in the Gaza Strip.

Later Tuesday the Israel Defense Forces accused Hamas of “attempting to create a false impression of efforts to locate the bodies, while in fact holding deceased hostages whose remains it refuses to release as required by the agreement.”

The IDF said its drones had recorded Hamas operatives “removing body remains from a structure that had been prepared in advance and burying them nearby” on Monday, and then staging “a false display of discovering a deceased hostage’s body.”

The IDF did not identify the remains involved in the incident, but the family of Tzarfati released a statement saying they were his.

In a statement shared by the hostage families forum, the Tzarfati family said Hamas had inflicted a deception “upon our family as we try to heal.”

“This morning we were shown video footage of our beloved son’s remains being removed, buried, and handed over to the Red Cross — an abhorrent manipulation designed to sabotage the deal and abandon the effort to bring all the hostages home,” the family was quoted as saying.

Hamas did not have an immediate response to that allegation, but it has said it needs more time, assistance and heavy equipment to locate and recover the remaining 13 bodies still in the Palestinian territory, and that work has ramped up in recent days, with Egypt sending a team to assist and help coordinate, and the Red Cross confirming to CBS News on Monday that its staff were accompanying recovery teams on the ground.

President Trump warned on Saturday that he was “watching very closely” to ensure that Hamas returned more bodies within 48 hours.

“Some of the bodies are hard to reach, but others they can return now and, for some reason, they are not,” he wrote on his Truth Social network.

Speaking with the Al Jazeera network on Tuesday, Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said the group was communicating all logistical details about its effort to locate and retrieve hostage remains with a joint operations room established in Cairo. He said Hamas was updating the mediators on developments regularly and he accused Israel of obstructing the efforts by not allowing sufficient heavy equipment into Gaza to find and recover remains.

Israel has permitted some digging machines into Gaza, and Al Jazeera aired live video on Tuesday that appeared to show a Hamas member emerging from a newly-cleared entrance to a tunnel in the southern city of Khan Younis holding several fingers up, possibly indicating that additional remains had been found.

There was no immediate word from Hamas about the discovery of any additional bodies.

“Hamas is fully and completely committed to the ceasefire agreement on the Gaza Strip, which includes, among other things, the handover of Israeli captives — alive and dead,” Qassem told Al Jazeera. “Over the past period we have worked to hand over whatever remains of the captives’ bodies are available. Now the occupation threatens and vows retaliation. It knows perfectly well that the obstacles preventing the retrieval of more bodies are caused by the occupation itself.”

He said Israel’s two-year bombardment had “destroyed the Gaza Strip and altered the landmarks of cities, streets and roads — all the markers the resistance [Hamas] could use to locate the remaining bodies,” and accused Israel of using the incomplete handover of remains “as a pretext to sustain its war” in Gaza.

In its statement on Tuesday, the IDF rejected Hamas’ claims of a shortage of heavy equipment as false. 

It said such equipment “is clearly unnecessary for the transfer of remains, and therefore these claims do not constitute an obstacle to the return of the remaining deceased hostages.”

Israeli hostage negotiator and peace campaigner Gershon Baskin told CBS News earlier this month that it was “very likely that there might be Israeli bodies underneath the rubble” in Gaza, where the Hamas-run government estimates that at least 90% of the buildings have been damaged or destroyed.

“Some of the deceased hostages may never be found, and that’s part of the reality, but we have to make sure that Hamas is doing everything possible to do it,” Baskin said.

During negotiations on the Israel-Hamas peace deal, Hamas representatives said they did not know the location of all the remains of deceased hostages, according to Israeli media.