Hostages’ families furious as Israel returns over 80 bodies to Gaza

“How can the government give them back without receiving anything in return?” they ask.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Families of hostages held by Hamas are furious over an announcement Monday by the Hamas-run Gazan Health Ministry that Israel had returned dozens of bodies of Palestinians killed in the Gaza Strip.

“We are livid about the return of 80 bodies of Gazans for burial in the Gaza Strip. How is it possible that the State of Israel, under the leadership of Netanyahu, is returning bodies that are not part of a deal? The Hostages and Missing Families Forum said in a statement.

“What about our family members, how long will they be held captive by Hamas in Gaza?”

They accused the prime minister of delaying the negotiations over an agreement with the Gazan terrorist organization that has been on the table in a few formats for over two months, but “specifically revealing great determination and efficiency in returning Gazan bodies to their families” while they wait, “on the verge of despair,” for their loved ones.

The angry relatives also reminded Netanyahu of an equation he made famous decades ago regarding negotiations with the Palestinians, which in reality has almost never been kept by any Israeli government.

“Where is the prime minister who coined the famous equation of ‘If they give, they’ll receive, if they won’t give – they won’t receive’? Where is that equation when it comes to our abductees?” they protested.

The group demanded answers from both the prime minister and his coordinator in charge of the return of POWs and missing people, Brig. Gen. (res.) Gal Hirsch.

Reuters reported that the Hamas government said that Israel had handed over 89 bodies as “bones and decomposed bodies in an inhumane manner.”

Yamen Abu Suleiman, director of the Palestinian Civil Emergency Service in Khan Younis, accused Israel of committing “a war crime” and “a crime against humanity” by returning the bodies “with no information about the names, or ages, or anything,” the news agency said.

They would try to determine their cause of death and identify them, Suleiman added, before burying them in a mass grave in Khan Younis.

The media in Gaza showed a clip of tractors digging in the sand near the Nasser Hospital in the city.

This is not the first time Israel has taken bodies out of Gaza and then returned them while receiving nothing in return.

While the IDF has not commented as yet on Monday’s return, it has in the past said that it exhumes bodies in Gaza to make sure they are not those of hostages that Hamas has buried, and then gives them back after running the relevant tests.