JERUSALEM: Israel’s prime minister accused Hamas on Friday of murdering two Israeli children in Gaza and said the militants would pay for failing to return their mother, Shiri Bibas, which Hamas blamed on a possible “mix-up of bodies.”
Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said after an analysis of the remains that Palestinian militants had killed the Bibas boys “with their bare hands,” while Hamas has long maintained an Israeli air strike killed them and their mother early in the war.
Relatives of the Bibas family, however, suggested Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was also accountable for the deaths, saying he would receive “no forgiveness” for abandoning the mother and her children during their ordeal.
More than 15 months of war have left much of Gaza in ruins after Palestinian militants attacked Israel and seized 251 hostages on October 7, 2023. Sixty-seven hostages remain in Gaza, including 35 the Israeli military has said are dead.
Despite the tensions over Thursday’s handover of remains, the next swap of live hostages for Palestinian inmates in Israeli prisons was still expected to go ahead Saturday under an ongoing truce deal.
Hamas had said the four bodies returned on Thursday included those of Bibas and her two sons Ariel, aged four at the time of his abduction, and Kfir, the youngest hostage at just nine months old.
On Friday, however, after forensic analysis, Israel said the body purported to be that of Shiri Bibas was not hers, with Netanyahu saying Hamas had “placed the body of a Gazan woman in a coffin.”
Hamas admitted “the possibility of an error or mix-up,” which it attributed to Israeli bombing of the area.
Netanyahu vowed to “ensure that Hamas pays the full price for this cruel and evil violation of the agreement.”
In response, Hamas affirmed its “seriousness and full commitment” to its responsibilities under the ceasefire, and said it had “no interest in failing to comply or holding on to any bodies.”
It also asked Israel to return the body of the Gazan woman.
“Who kidnaps a little boy and a baby and murders them? Monsters. That’s who,” Netanyahu said. “I vow that I will not rest until the savages who executed our hostages are brought to justice.”
But the sister-in-law of Shiri Bibas said in a statement that the family was “not seeking revenge right now,” while levelling a measure of the blame at Netanyahu.
“There is no forgiveness for abandoning them on October 7, and no forgiveness for abandoning them in captivity,” Ofri Bibas said.
“We are still waiting for Shiri and fear for her fate.”
British foreign minister David Lammy said that Bibas’s “body must be returned,” while denouncing the “sick and abhorrent” killing of her sons.
“The hostages must be released,” he added. “This nightmare must end.”
In Jerusalem, musician David Shemer, 72, said he hoped Israeli would not retaliate.
“There are voices about totally destroying Gaza and all this. For me, it’s not only inappropriate, it’s immoral,” he said. “Revenge is a very human impulse, but it is useless.”
Hamas also handed over a fourth body on Thursday, that of Oded Lifshitz, a veteran journalist and long-time defender of Palestinian rights who was aged 83 at the time of his capture.
The repatriations were part of the first phase of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, which took effect on January 19 and is to expire in early March.
The deal has so far led to the release of 19 living Israeli hostages in exchange for more than 1,100 Palestinian prisoners.
Hamas’s armed wing confirmed that it would release six Israelis on Saturday in the seventh swap of the ceasefire.
The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club advocacy group said Israel would free 602 inmates in return. Most were arrested after the October 7 attack, it said.
Israeli campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum has published the names of the six Israelis to be freed — Eliya Cohen, Tal Shoham, Omer Shem Tov, Omer Wenkert, Hisham Al-Sayed and Avera Mengistu.
Sayed and Mengistu have been held in Gaza for around a decade.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar has said talks will begin this week on the truce’s second phase, aiming to lay out a more permanent end to the war.
A Hamas spokesman accused Netanyahu on Thursday of “procrastinating” on phase two, saying the group was “ready to engage” in negotiations.
Alongside the Gaza war, violence has surged in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Netanyahu ordered an “intensive operation against centers of terrorism” in the West Bank before visiting troops operating in Tulkarem refugee camp on Friday, his office said.
His order came after bombs exploded on three buses in central Israel without causing any injuries.
Hamas’s 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,214 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 48,319 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory that the United Nations considers reliable.