LONDON: The US has denied claims that Hamas is violating its ceasefire deal with Israel by failing to return all dead hostages, the BBC reported on Thursday.
Hamas has returned nine of the 28 bodies of dead hostages it holds, and said the remaining corpses are buried deep under rubble, requiring specialized equipment to extract.
Two senior advisers to US President Donald Trump said plans to demilitarize Gaza and install a transitional government remain underway despite the delay. They told reporters that the US government does not believe Hamas is violating the ceasefire.
Israel, responding to the delayed handover of the hostage bodies, limited pledged aid supplies to Gaza.
The level of destruction in the Palestinian enclave means that the recovery of all slain hostages could take weeks, one of the US advisers told the media.
Under the terms of the first phase of the US-brokered ceasefire, Hamas is required to return the remains of all 28 dead hostages.
The group’s armed wing said: “The remaining bodies require significant efforts and specialized equipment to search for and retrieve, and we are making a great effort to close this file.”
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz on Wednesday said the country’s military should be prepared to act if Hamas refuses to implement the deal.
Israel has agreed to exchange the bodies of 15 slain Palestinians for every dead Israeli hostage.
US denies claims Hamas violating ceasefire over hostage returns
https://arab.news/jfqt2
US denies claims Hamas violating ceasefire over hostage returns
- Group says it requires special equipment to extract bodies from under rubble
- Level of destruction in Gaza means recovery of all slain hostages could take weeks: Trump adviser
Palestinian NGO condemns Israeli act of ‘revenge’ after prisoner abuse video
- A Palestinian NGO has denounced what it called an Israeli act of revenge after a video showed far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir overseeing the abuse of detainees in a military priso
RAMALLAH: A Palestinian NGO has denounced what it called an Israeli act of revenge after a video showed far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir overseeing the abuse of detainees in a military prison.
Just days before the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Ben Gvir held a tour of Ofer Prison in the occupied West Bank, Israel’s Channel 7 reported.
In footage filmed on Friday and broadcast by the channel, around 20 police officers are seen storming a hallway leading to prison cells, brandishing their weapons and firing stun grenades.
They then pull five detainees from their cells, their hands tied behind their backs, forcing them face-down onto the floor.
The operation took place as a bill proposing the death penalty for Palestinian prisoners convicted of terrorism awaited a final vote in the Israeli parliament.
“This is all part of ongoing displays meant to take revenge on Palestinian detainees,” Abdallah al?Zaghari, head of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, told AFP on Saturday.
“Everything Ben Gvir and the far?right government are doing affects not only the Palestinian people and prisoners in detention camps — it also impacts the global legal and human rights system,” he added.
Ben Gvir, known for his inflammatory rhetoric, is considered one of the most hard-line members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition.
“It is simply a source of pride — arriving at a prison like this, a prison for terrorists, the vilest of the vile, seeing them like this,” Ben Gvir said in the video.
“I want one more thing: to execute them — the death penalty for terrorists,” he added.
Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on Saturday said the remarks were “a new war crime and a blatant challenge to international humanitarian law regarding prisoners.”
International rights groups have repeatedly warned of alleged abuse and mistreatment inflicted in Israeli prisons since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
While the death penalty exists for a small number of crimes in Israel, it has become a de facto abolitionist country, with the Nazi Holocaust perpetrator Adolf Eichmann the last person to be executed in 1962.
