Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said the war in Gaza will not end until Hamas is fully disarmed and the Palestinian territory demilitarised.
His comments came as Hamas’s military wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, handed over the remains of two Israeli hostages on Saturday night under a US-brokered ceasefire agreement.
In a statement, Mr Netanyahu’s office said a Red Cross team received the bodies from Hamas and transferred them to Israeli forces in Gaza for identification. The recovery of hostages’ remains has been one of the key sticking points in implementing the first phase of the truce.
Israel has also linked the reopening of the Rafah crossing Gaza’s main route to Egypt to the return of all remaining hostages’ bodies.
Speaking on Israeli Channel 14, according to AFP, Mr Netanyahu said completing the second phase of the ceasefire was vital to achieving lasting peace.
“Phase B also involves the disarming of Hamas and the demilitarisation of the Gaza Strip,” he said. “When that is successfully completed hopefully in an easy way, but if not, in a hard way then the war will end.”
Hamas has so far resisted calls for disarmament and, since the pause in fighting, has been working to reassert its control in parts of Gaza.
Under the truce deal, brokered by US President Donald Trump’s administration, Hamas has released all 20 surviving hostages, along with the bodies of nine Israelis and one Nepalese citizen. In return, Israel has freed nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and handed over 135 bodies of Palestinians since the ceasefire took effect on 10 October.
The body handed over on Friday was identified as that of Eliyahu Margalit, a 75-year-old who was killed during Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack.
Hamas said it had recovered the two additional bodies earlier on Saturday. The group has claimed that some of the remains of hostages are still buried under rubble and has requested more time and technical assistance to retrieve them.
Mr Netanyahu has hinted that the Rafah crossing will remain closed until Hamas fulfils its commitments. His office said reopening the crossing would depend on Hamas “returning the hostages and the bodies of the deceased” and implementing the agreed framework.
The Palestinian mission in Cairo earlier said the crossing could open on Monday for Gazans living in Egypt who wished to return home. But shortly after, Israel said the crossing would remain shut “until further notice”.
Hamas warned that keeping the crossing closed could delay the transfer of bodies and hinder humanitarian operations.
In northern Gaza, UN humanitarian relief chief Tom Fletcher described the situation as “devastating”, saying large sections of Gaza City had been reduced to rubble.
“I drove through here seven to eight months ago when most of these buildings were still standing… it’s now a wasteland,” he said.
Mr Fletcher outlined a “massive 60-day plan” to deliver food, rebuild health facilities, provide shelter for winter, and reopen schools for hundreds of thousands of children.
While aid convoys continue to enter Gaza through Israeli checkpoints, sporadic violence has persisted.
Gaza’s civil defence agency, which operates under Hamas authority, said nine Palestinians including four children were killed when Israeli tanks fired at a bus in Gaza City’s Shaaban district.
At Al-Ahli Hospital, grieving relatives gathered around the shrouded bodies.
“My daughter, her children and her husband; my son, his children and his wife were killed. What did they do wrong?” asked Umm Mohammed Shaaban, a survivor.
The Israeli military said its troops fired on a vehicle that posed “an imminent threat” after approaching the designated “yellow line” buffer zone, insisting the shots were in line with ceasefire rules.