Hamas says it has handed over the body of hostage Shiri Bibas to the Red Cross

BarcelonaHamas has announced that it has already handed over to the Red Cross the remains of Shiri Bibas, the Israeli hostage it was supposed to return on Thursday. Israel denounced that the remains of one of the bodies that Hamas handed over on Thursday The remains were not matched to any hostages after DNA tests. Tel Aviv had accused the Palestinian group of "flagrant violation of the agreement" and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had vowed that Israel would make Hamas pay. The Palestinian militant group responded that there may have been a mistake and that the woman's remains had been mixed up with other victims of the Israeli bombing in which they say she and her two children, aged 9 months and 4 years, were killed in November last year.

Hamas had said in a statement this morning that it would investigate Israel's claims "with complete seriousness", and said it may have been due to a "mistake" or that Shiri Bibas's remains had been mixed up with those of other victims after an Israeli air strike on the site "where the lagoon was". The Islamist group, which reported the woman and children were killed in an Israeli airstrike in November 2023, has said it will inform mediators of the results of the investigation, while calling on Israel "to return the body it claims belongs to a Palestinian woman." The Israeli military insists the children were killed by the Islamists, and the victims' families have blamed Netanyahu "for abandoning them."

In an interview on Fox, US President Donald Trump said Netanyahu "has no doubt that he should return to war in Gaza" and that "he is very angry, and rightly so, about what happened to the hostages' bones." Trump also pledged to support Trump if he decides to end the ceasefire after the first phase ends on March 1, as he "recommends."

Netanyahu accused the Islamist group of acting in an "indescribably cynical manner" and called it "a cruel and atrocious violation of the agreement." He also said that the Jewish state "will act with determination" to return the body of Bibas and all the other hostages, both living and dead, and to "ensure that Hamas pays the full price" for this act.

The handover of the four bodies, which was the first return of deceased hostages, took place in southern Gaza, in Khan Younis, with a strong deployment of armed militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The black coffins were presented on a stage with a banner on which a caricature of Netanyahu appeared as if he were a bloody vampire with the images of the dead underneath. The bodies were transported in Red Cross vehicles and handed over to the Israeli army inside Gaza, which finally transported them to the National Forensic Institute for identification.

Hamas to release last six hostages alive

The fact that one of the bodies, according to the army, does not correspond to any hostage has set off alarm bells in Israel. The ceasefire is very fragile and should continue this Saturday with the release of another six hostages in exchange for 500 Palestinian prisoners, most of them women and children, detained by the Israeli army in Gaza in the current offensive. However, on previous occasions Tel-Aviv has delayed the release of prisoners when it has considered that Hamas was violating some part of the agreement, as it did this Friday.

Hamas has assured that it is committed to fulfilling "all obligations" of the ceasefire agreement and has said that it has no interest in keeping any hostage bodies. It has also announced that this Saturday it will release the six Israeli captives who remain alive in the Strip. They are Eliya Maimon Yitzhak Cohen, Omer Shem Tov, Omer Wenkrat, Tal Shoham, Avera Mengitsu and Hisham in el Sayed. The latter two were held hostage in Gaza for more than a decade after they entered of their own free will, while the rest were kidnapped in the attack on October 7, 2023. In return, Israel should release 602 Palestinian prisoners, Hamas has said.

What is not at all clear is what will happen after March 1, when the first phase of the ceasefire ends. The Arab countries met yesterday in Riyadh to discuss the reconstruction of Gaza, but the reality is that there is still no answer to who should govern the Strip if Hamas is to be excluded.

Netanyahu orders a "massive operation" in the West Bank

All this while the Israeli police are investigating what is considered a "possible terrorist attack" The almost simultaneous explosion of three buses on Thursday night in Bat Yam, south of Tel-Aviv. The vehicles are said to have exploded in a parking lot and there were no people inside, so there are no casualties. However, the authorities say they have found explosives in two other buses, which did not explode, and that they are investigating a sixth in other nearby parking lots. The response of the Israeli Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has not been long in coming: he has instructed the army to carry out a "massive operation" in the West Bank.

The Israeli Police and the Shin Bet internal security agency have arrested this Friday "two Jewish Israelis and a Palestinian, in relation to the explosions in three buses in central Israel on Thursday night." The case is under summary secrecy. The public broadcaster Kan reported that two Jewish Israelis, one of them a taxi driver, were arrested on suspicion of having taken the perpetrators to the scene of the attack. Both men, from Bat Yam and Holon respectively, are also suspected of attempted murder. Another of those arrested for his alleged connection to the attack is said to be a Palestinian citizen who was illegally in Israel. But the perpetrators of the attack, whose investigators are said to have video footage of the explosives being placed, are still at large.