Middle EastAnalysis

Israel considers how to respond to Hamas’s failure to return bodies of all hostages

Possible responses include giving Hamas more time, cutting flow of humanitarian aid or threatening to end ceasefire

Mourners at the funeral on Thursday of Tamir Nimrodi, who was captured by Palestinian militants during the October 7th attack on southern Israel in 2023. Photograph: Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images
Mourners at the funeral on Thursday of Tamir Nimrodi, who was captured by Palestinian militants during the October 7th attack on southern Israel in 2023. Photograph: Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images
Mark Weiss's picture
Mark Weiss
Thu Oct 16 2025 - 16:16 • 2 MIN READ

Israel’s prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu will convene security consultations on Thursday night after rejecting Hamas’s claim that it met its obligations under the Gaza ceasefire deal by returning all the bodies of hostages that it was able to reach.

“What remains of the bodies of hostages [that were not returned] requires great effort and special equipment to search for, and we are making great efforts to resolve this issue,” the militant group said, after two more bodies were returned on Wednesday night.

The remaining 28 bodies of people seized by Hamas during the October 7th, 2023 attack should have been returned to Israel on Monday under the terms of the ceasefire agreement. However, the remains of 19 hostages are still in Gaza. Israel believes Hamas is lying and knows the location of some of those bodies.

Israel’s possible responses include giving Hamas more time, cutting the flow of humanitarian aid or threatening to renew military action. Israel has already indicated it will not engage in talks on Gaza’s reconstruction and administration until all hostages are returned.

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The Hostages and Missing Families forum on Thursday called on the government to immediately cease implementing the remaining stages of the ceasefire agreement. “Any step that relieves pressure on Hamas or allows the agreement to continue as long as the hostages are not returned constitutes a serious moral and leadership failure,” the group said in a statement.

[ What remains of Hamas after two years of war? ]

Defence minister Israel Katz threatened to resume fighting if Hamas did not honour the ceasefire agreement.

“If Hamas refuses to comply with the agreement, Israel, in co-ordination with the United States, will resume fighting and act to achieve a total defeat of Hamas,” he said.

A senior American official, briefing reporters on Wednesday night, said that “we are not yet at the point where we feel that the agreement has been violated”.

Senior US officials have confirmed that the extreme conditions in Gaza, including widespread destruction, debris and unexploded ordnance, make recovery challenging.

The officials said Turkey will dispatch an 80-person team, with earthquake experience, specialising in retrieval to help locate the bodies.

[ Pick-up trucks and public executions as Hamas emerges from Gaza’s ruins ]

Separately, the US will offer financial rewards to Gaza residents who provide information leading to the recovery of bodies.

An official added that Washington is working closely with mediators and doing their best “to get as many bodies out as possible”, providing Israeli intelligence to aid the retrieval. “We’ll keep working in good faith until we are able to exhaust that [diplomatic] mechanism.”