Four coffins with dead hostages have been retrieved in Gaza by the Red Cross and handed over to Israel's military, according to several media outlets.
The Netanyahu government accuses Hamas of violating the peace plan since only four of the twenty-eight remaining dead hostages were handed over on Monday, when all 20 living hostages were also exchanged for nearly 2,000 Palestinians who have been held in Israeli captivity.
While waiting for Hamas to hand over the remaining remains, Israel will keep the border crossing in Rafah in southern Gaza closed and halve the amount of humanitarian aid allowed into the strip, according to Israeli Haaretz, citing Reuters.
US President Donald Trump is also putting pressure on:
"The job is not finished. The dead have not been returned as promised," he writes on his social media platform.
Egyptian search effort
The terrorist-stamped Islamist group has previously stated that they do not know where all the dead are.
Mediators from various Arab countries are working on the issue and do not believe that the peace plan is in jeopardy, according to a diplomatic source for Times of Israel. The newspaper writes, citing Qatari Al-Araby, that Egyptian personnel on site in Gaza are working to find the remains of dead hostages.
The Red Cross has warned that the return of the remains may take weeks and that some remains may never be found in the rubble.
On Tuesday, Israel's military announced that it had identified the four bodies handed over on Monday as a 23-year-old Nepalese student and three Israelis, 22, 26, and 53 years old.
Scenes of joy
Scenes of joy took place on Monday in Tel Aviv, on the West Bank, and in Gaza, as relatives were reunited with loved ones who had been locked up since the outbreak of war in October 2023.
At a summit in the Egyptian Sharm el-Sheikh, Donald Trump announced that the second phase of the peace plan has now begun.
Many analysts point out, however, that the plan does not contain any long-term political solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, which has been an open wound in the region since the founding of the state of Israel in the late 1940s. Trump promises to soon give an answer on the matter.
Many like the one-state solution, some like the two-state solution. We'll see, he says to journalists on Air Force One on his way back to the US, according to AFP.
I will decide what I think is right, but I will coordinate with other countries.
