Hamas hands over bodies of youngest Gaza hostages taken from Israel
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JERUSALEM – Hamas on Feb 20 handed over the bodies of Israeli infant Kfir Bibas and his four-year-old brother Ariel, the two youngest captives taken by Hamas in its Oct 7, 2023, attack and among the most potent symbols of the trauma inflicted that day.
Red Cross vehicles drove away from the handover site in the Gaza Strip with four black coffins that had been placed on a stage. Each of the caskets had a small picture of the hostages.
Armed Hamas militants in black and camouflage uniforms surrounded the area.
UN rights chief Volker Turk called the parading of bodies in Gaza abhorrent and cruel and said it flew in the face of international law.
“Under international law, any handover of the remains of deceased must comply with the prohibition of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, ensuring respect for the dignity of the deceased and their families,” he said in a statement.
After the hostages were handed over by the Red Cross, the military said the coffins were scanned for explosives before being transported to Israel.
Israelis lined the road in the rain near the Gaza border to pay their respects as the convoy carrying the coffins drove by.
“We stand here together with a broken heart, the sky is also crying with us, and we pray to see better days,” said a woman who gave her name only as Efrat.
In Tel Aviv, people gathered, some weeping, at what has come to be known as Hostages Square outside Israel’s defence headquarters.
“Agony. Pain. There are no words. Our hearts – the hearts of an entire nation – lie in tatters,” said Israeli President Isaac Herzog.
The bodies of the two boys, their mother Shiri Bibas and a fourth hostage, Mr Oded Lifshitz, were handed over under the Gaza ceasefire agreement reached in January with the backing of the US and the mediation of Qatar and Egypt.
The Red Cross on Feb 20 urged that the handover be kept dignified. The Hamas-directed public hostage release ceremonies have come under growing criticism, including from the UN, which denounced the “parading of hostages”.
‘Symbol’
Kfir Bibas was nine months old when the Bibas family, including their father Yarden, was abducted at Kibbutz Nir Oz, one of a string of communities near Gaza that was overrun by the Hamas-led attackers from Gaza .
Hamas said in November 2023 that the boys and their mother had been killed in an Israeli air strike, but the Israeli authorities never confirmed the deaths.
“Shiri and the kids became a symbol,” Nir Oz resident Yiftach Cohen said.
Nir Oz lost around a quarter of its inhabitants, either killed or kidnapped, during the assault.
Mr Bibas was returned in an earlier exchange of hostages for prisoners in February.
Some of those Israelis killed on Oct 7, 2023, were known peace activists.
Mr Lifshitz was 83 when he was abducted from Nir Oz, the kibbutz he helped found.
His wife Yocheved, who was 85 at the time, was seized with him and released two weeks later, along with another elderly woman.
Mr Lifshitz was a former journalist. In an opinion piece in left-leaning Haaretz in January 2019, he listed what he said were Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policy failures, including his rejection of the two-state solution with the Palestinians and a 2011 deal that exchanged more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners – including hardliner Yahya Sinwar – for one abducted Israeli soldier.
Sinwar would become Hamas’ leader in Gaza and the mastermind of the Oct 7, 2023, attack. He was killed by Israeli forces during the Gaza war.
Mr Netanyahu and his defence establishment faced criticism over the security breach on Oct 7, 2023, the country’s single deadliest day.
Living hostages
The handover marks the first return of dead bodies during the current agreement, and Israel is not expected to confirm their identities until full DNA checks have been completed.
The Hamas-led attack on Israel killed about 1,200 people, according to Israeli tallies, with 251 kidnapped.
Israel’s subsequent military campaign has killed around 48,000 people, the Palestinian health authorities say, and left densely populated Gaza in ruins.
The Feb 20 handover of bodies will be followed by the return of six living hostages on Feb 22, in exchange for hundreds more Palestinians – expected to be women and minors detained by Israeli forces in Gaza during the war.
Negotiations for a second phase
But prospects for an agreement remain uncertain with both sides far apart on issues, including the future governance of Gaza, which Israel has said cannot be run by either Hamas or the Western-backed Palestinian Authority.
The issue has also been clouded by US President Donald Trump’s call for Palestinians to be resettled outside Gaza, a move critics say would amount to a war crime and ethnic cleansing, and for the enclave to be developed as a waterfront property under US control. REUTERS
