Israel says it is preparing for Hamas to return bodies of four hostages on Thursday
Under Gaza deal annex not made public, 4 more bodies are to be returned next week; 3 living hostages are set to be freed Saturday, but Jerusalem is hoping for more
Israel is expecting to receive the bodies of four hostages from Hamas on Thursday, an Israeli official told The Times of Israel on Monday, under the provisions of the first stage of an ongoing ceasefire deal with the Palestinian terror group.
The agreement with Hamas, the official said, stipulates that the bodies of a number of hostages will be returned to Israel on the 33rd day of the ceasefire, which is Thursday.
The IDF has already begun preparations for their return, though the Prime Minister’s Office has yet to publicly confirm the details.
The names of the hostages will be given to Israel on Thursday morning and the bodies will be transported to the Abu Kabir forensic institute by IDF ambulances. Families will only be updated after the bodies are properly identified, according to Hebrew media reports on Monday night.
Texts of the hostage-ceasefire deal that have been published to date indicated that human remains would only be returned after living hostages in phase one, suggesting that the arrangement is part of hitherto unpublished elements of the deal.
The full terms of the deal have never been officially released.
Updated schedule
The following is the schedule for the release of hostages during the remainder of the ongoing first phase of the deal, as set out in an annex whose content was revealed on Monday evening but has not been officially published.
On Thursday, February 20, Israel is slated to receive the bodies of four hostages, as stipulated in the yet-to-be-published annex. Israel expects to receive the names of those four hostages Thursday morning.
On Saturday, February 22, Hamas will release three living hostages.
On Thursday, February 27, Hamas will release four more bodies of hostages.
Between February 22 and March 2, Hamas is slated to release phase one’s final three living hostages, including Hisham al-Sayed and Avera Mengistu, who have been held in Gaza for over a decade.
In exchange for the eight bodies, Israel will release all women and children who were arrested in Gaza since October 7. Hebrew media reported that these detainees were not involved in Hamas’s onslaught or in fighting against Israel since, so it was not immediately clear why they were arrested.
The Israeli official told The Times of Israel that Jerusalem was working on getting the six remaining living hostages who are to be freed in the ongoing first stage released as soon as possible, either in the course of this week or on Saturday.
MK Ze’ev Elkin, who sits on the security cabinet, said on Monday that Israel would use “any leverage” it had over Hamas to ensure the return of the remaining hostages due to come out in the first phase of the deal, and would try to expedite the process.
“Israel has a goal of bringing forward the release of the first phase hostages, certainly the living ones,” he told Kan.
While Israel has denied Hamas’s accusations that it is blocking the delivery of housing materials to Gaza, Elkin confirmed on Monday that several mobile homes were standing at the border.
An Israeli official cited by the Walla news site said that the delivery of the mobile homes was one of the issues currently being discussed with mediators in Cairo. Israel was said to have approved the entry of 300 such temporary residences at this stage in the ceasefire.
With six rounds of hostage-prisoner releases completed in the ongoing Gaza ceasefire deal as of Saturday, there are 14 Israeli hostages still supposed to be freed in the first phase. Hamas has said eight of them are dead, and Israel has indicated that its information matches this claim.
Hamas has so far released 24 hostages — 19 Israeli civilians and female soldiers, and five Thai nationals — during the ceasefire. The terror group also freed 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November 2023, and four hostages were released before that.
Earlier on Monday, the Israeli official told The Times of Israel that it was “no coincidence” that US special envoy Steve Witkoff said the previous day that talks on the second stage of the hostage deal would start this week, and that the Prime Minister’s Office announced a short while later that a team would be headed to Cairo.
But the official said that Israel’s decision was not the result of US pressure: “The moment Hamas carried out the recent hostage release, as far as we’re concerned, we’re continuing the agreement.”
The ceasefire teetered last week after Hamas said it was delaying the scheduled hostage releases over alleged Israeli violations of the agreement. US President Donald Trump responded by saying that the terror group should release “all” the hostages, lest “the gates of hell” be opened on Gaza.
After intense intervention from the mediating countries to solve the crisis, Saturday’s hostage-prisoner exchange took place as planned, with Sagui Dekel-Chen, Sasha Troufanov, and Iair Horn returning to Israel after 498 days of captivity in Gaza.
Though the ceasefire stipulates that the parties must begin holding negotiations regarding phase two of the deal no later than the 16th day of the first phase, which was on February 3, talks have yet to begin.
“There is no change to the continuation of the deal. That means entering now into talks on the second phase,” said the official, adding that negotiations would begin after the security cabinet, which was set to convene on Monday evening, approved Israel’s positions.
An Israeli official told Channel 12 that he expected Hamas to hold onto at least one hostage until the end of phase one, as leverage to ensure that Israel is conducting substantive negotiations regarding phase two.
The network also reported that the prime minister intends to announce the departure of a senior delegation to Qatar in the near future.
Israel ’embracing’ Trump’s Gaza proposal ‘with both hands’
The ceasefire deal has been overshadowed to some extent by Trump’s call for all Palestinians to be permanently moved out of Gaza and for the territory to be taken over as a waterfront development under US control.
The official told The Times of Israel that Israel was “embracing (the proposal) with both hands,” while stressing that it would entail voluntary rather than forced migration.
“Our goal is to allow the creation of an infrastructure to enable Gazans to leave, and we assess that many will leave,” the official said. “We are trying in the near term to implement his vision and lay out technical, operational and practical details.”
Netanyahu told US Jewish leaders in Jerusalem on Sunday that Trump’s plan is the most realistic for the region. “Trump has presented a bold new vision, the only plan I think can work,” Netanyahu said, calling it “right on the dot.”
Defense Minister Israel Katz late Monday announced the establishment of a new directorate in the Defense Ministry tasked with enabling Palestinians to “voluntarily” leave the Gaza Strip, as per Trump’s plan.
The new directorate will include representatives from various government ministries and defense bodies, his office said, adding that the ministry’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) has presented Katz with an initial plan on the subject.
“The plan includes extensive assistance that will allow any Gaza resident who wants to emigrate to a third state, to receive support that includes special departure arrangements through the sea, air, and land, among other things,” Katz’s office said.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich told reporters earlier on Monday that he planned to demand that the security cabinet vote on Trump’s Gaza takeover plan, while insisting that Israel must also adopt the US president’s demand that Hamas return all hostages immediately.
Seventy captives remain in Gaza, including the bodies of 35 confirmed dead by the IDF.
Eight hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 40 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the Israeli military as they tried to escape their captors.
Hamas is also holding al-Sayed and Mengistu, the two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the body of an IDF soldier who was killed in 2014. The body of another IDF soldier, also killed in 2014, was recovered from Gaza in January.
