Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to convene an emergency security meeting to determine possible sanctions against Hamas, following Israeli claims that the casket returned by the group on Monday contained the remains of a hostage already recovered and buried.
According to a statement released on X by Netanyahu’s office today, the meeting will “discuss Israel’s steps in response to (Hamas’) violations.”
Israeli officials said the coffin, transferred via the Red Cross inside the Gaza Strip, was believed to contain the partial remains of an unrecovered hostage. However, forensic tests have revealed that the remains belonged to Ofir Tzarfati, a hostage whose body had already been retrieved by the Israeli military in December 2023.
A statement from Netanyahu’s office on Tuesday confirmed the finding “following the completion of the identification process,” adding that Tzarfati’s family had been notified.
The handover was part of the first phase of the US-, Qatari-, and Egyptian-brokered ceasefire agreement, which includes the recovery of 13 remaining Israeli hostages whose bodies, according to Hamas, are still trapped beneath rubble and require time and equipment to retrieve.
The statement said that this “constitutes a clear violation of the agreement by the Hamas terrorist organization”.
Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir wrote on X , “The time has come to put an end to this threat once and for all. Rather than just punishing Hamas for its crimes, we need to hold it accountable for existing — and destroy it completely, in accordance with the central goal of this war.”
Addressing Netanyahu directly, Ben-Gvir added, “Enough hesitation. Give the order.”
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich also called on Netanyahu to instruct the military to re-arrest all prisoners released to the West Bank under the hostage exchange deal, describing it as a necessary response to Hamas’s “repeated violations.”
There was no immediate comment from Hamas.
The recovery and handover of hostages’ remains has been among the most contentious components of the ceasefire agreement reached on Oct. 10, following the two-year Israeli war on Gaza.
Under this agreement, Hamas released 20 hostages alive and returned the bodies of 16 others out of the 28 Israel has declared dead. Thirteen bodies remain unaccounted for in Gaza, including 10 Israelis and two foreign workers from Thailand and Tanzania.
On Sunday, Israeli government spokeswoman Shosh Bedrosian said on X that Hamas “knows where our hostages are,” adding that Israel has allowed a team of Egyptian technical specialists to enter Gaza to assist the Red Cross in recovering the remains of hostages using excavating machines and trucks behind the so-called “yellow line” — the designated withdrawal boundary for Israeli forces under the ceasefire terms.
Israel has refused to begin the second phase of the ceasefire until the remaining hostages’ bodies are returned. Hamas, however, maintains that retrieving the bodies from beneath Gaza’s destroyed neighborhoods requires additional time and resources currently unavailable.
