Nearly five days after President Donald Trump’s 48-hour deadline expired, Hamas continues to play the depraved game of deceit and deception with the bodies of Israeli hostages in its control.
On Saturday morning, Israeli authorities declared that the three bodies handed over by Hamas do not belong to any of the hostages. Reuters reported that “DNA testing by forensic authorities had determined they were not those of known hostages,” citing Israeli news outlets.
Under the U.S.-brokered 20-point Gaza peace plan, Hamas is obliged to return all living and murdered hostages within 72 hours of the ceasefire coming into effect. After a 22-day truce, the terrorist group is still holding on to 11 bodies, including those of U.S. hostages Itay Chen and Omer Neutra.
Hamas intends to drag out the delivery of the hostage bodies, buying time to rearm and rebuild its terrorist infrastructure destroyed in the two-year-long war. “Senior Hamas official Moussa Abu Marzouk has claimed that returning the bodies of the remaining 13 deceased hostages could take ‘months,'” Arutz Sheva/Israel National News reported on October 26.
The terrorist group is also hoping to extract more concessions, using the hostage bodies as leverage, Israel’s Ynetnews noted on Saturday:
The International Committee of the Red Cross said Friday it had “facilitated, at the request and with the agreement of the parties, the return of remains of three bodies to Israel.”However, a forensic examination at Israel’s Abu Kabir Institute for Forensic Medicine determined the remains do not belong to any of the Israeli hostages still held in Gaza — or to any Israeli hostage at all.“We’ve ruled out that the remains returned last night are linked to any Israeli hostage,” an Israeli official said Saturday morning. “This specific incident does not constitute a violation, as we initially assessed it was unlikely the remains were connected to the hostages. Still, we prefer Hamas send any findings for verification. Regardless, Hamas continues to violate its basic obligation by refusing to return the bodies.” (..)Israeli officials believe Hamas is deliberately stalling, using the hostages’ remains as bargaining chips while attempting to reassert control in Gaza and delay any future demilitarization efforts. With international negotiations over a postwar stabilization force still ongoing, Hamas is expected to leverage the bodies in talks with both Israel and the United States to improve its position in future discussions over Gaza’s reconstruction and governance.
Since October 7, 2023, Hamas has used hostages, living and dead, as bargaining chips in its perverted bid to gain an upper hand on Israel, which it was unable to do in an open battlefield.
On Tuesday, Israeli military drone footage showed Hamas terrorists dumping the remains of a hostage in a dug-up grave. The terrorists later returned with an excavator and a Red Cross team, pretending to have found the body.
Adding insult to the injury, Israeli forensic investigation later revealed the body did not belong to any of the remaining hostages. It, however, constituted the body parts belonging to Ofir Tzarfati, a 27-year-old Israeli college student, who was abducted from the Nova festival during the October 7 massacre. The IDF special forces recovered Ofir’s remains in December 2023.
In February 2025, Hamas handed over the body of an unidentified Gaza woman, claiming it belonged to Shiri Bibas, mother of 10-month-old Kfir and 4-year-old Ariel. That was an apparent attempt to conceal the brutal murder of the 32-year-old mother, who was abducted and killed along with her two little kids.
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