Israel returns 15 more Palestinian bodies to Gaza as first phase of ceasefire nears end

srael hand­ed over the bod­ies of 15 Pales­tini­ans on Wednes­day, a day af­ter Hamas re­turned the re­mains of an Is­raeli hostage. This is the lat­est swap as part of a U.S.-bro­kered cease­fire reached last month, whose first phase is com­ing to an end.

The In­ter­na­tion­al Com­mit­tee of the Red Cross said it helped trans­fer the bod­ies to Gaza.

The re­mains of two hostages, one Is­raeli and a Thai na­tion­al, re­main in Gaza. Hamas said Wednes­day it was de­ter­mined to up­hold its side of the agree­ment and re­turn them both.

Mean­while, Turk­ish, Qatari and Egypt­ian me­di­a­tors met in Cairo on Tues­day to dis­cuss the sec­ond phase of the cease­fire, reached on Oct. 10,

The next phas­es will in­clude de­ploy­ing an armed In­ter­na­tion­al Sta­bi­liza­tion Force, or ISF, and de­vel­op­ing an in­ter­na­tion­al body to gov­ern Gaza and over­see re­con­struc­tion. The ISF will be tasked with keep­ing se­cu­ri­ty and en­sur­ing the dis­ar­ma­ment of Hamas, a key de­mand of Is­rael. In­done­sian of­fi­cials have said they plan to de­ploy 20,000 peace­keep­ers to the force.

Ma­jor ques­tions hang over near­ly every part of the plan and the time frame for im­ple­men­ta­tion of the frag­ile cease­fire that has held de­spite ac­cu­sa­tions of vi­o­la­tions by both sides.

In the mean­time, near­ly all Pales­tini­ans re­main dis­placed and de­pen­dent on hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid, Hamas re­tains sig­nif­i­cant con­trol over near­ly half of Gaza and the re­build­ing of the ter­ri­to­ry has bare­ly be­gun.

Pales­tin­ian bod­ies re­turned and hostage re­mains iden­ti­fied

Ac­cord­ing to the cease­fire, Is­rael has agreed to re­turn 15 Pales­tin­ian bod­ies for each hostage re­cov­ered. So far, 345 Pales­tin­ian bod­ies have been re­turned, said the Gaza Health Min­istry.

The min­istry said on­ly 99 bod­ies have been iden­ti­fied. It says iden­ti­fy­ing the re­mains is com­pli­cat­ed by a lack of DNA test­ing kits in Gaza.

Mean­while, Is­rael mourned the lat­est hostage to be re­turned by the Pales­tin­ian mil­i­tants, Dror Or. Is­rael’s mil­i­tary said Or and his wife, Yonat Or, were killed by mil­i­tants who over­ran their com­mu­ni­ty of Kib­butz Be’eri on Oct. 7, 2023.

Be­fore they were killed, the cou­ple evac­u­at­ed two of their chil­dren from their burn­ing house through a win­dow, said the Hostages Fam­i­lies Fo­rum. The de­ci­sion ul­ti­mate­ly saved the chil­dren, Al­ma and Noam, who were ab­duct­ed by the mil­i­tants and re­leased in a hostage deal in No­vem­ber 2023.

The fo­rum re­mem­bered Or as a de­vot­ed fa­ther and tal­ent­ed cheese­mak­er who spent years work­ing at the Be’eri dairy, even­tu­al­ly man­ag­ing it. The group said Or was al­so a chef and yo­ga teacher.

In to­tal, Pales­tin­ian mil­i­tants killed some 1,200 peo­ple across south­ern Is­rael and ab­duct­ed 251 to Gaza in their at­tack that kick-start­ed the war in Gaza.

With the re­turn of Or’s re­mains, al­most all of the hostages or their bod­ies have been re­cov­ered.

Hazem Qassem, the spokesper­son for Hamas, said Wednes­day that the mil­i­tant group was com­mit­ted to hand­ing over the re­mains of the two hostages and wrap­ping up the ex­change. Writ­ing on his Telegram chan­nel, he called for me­di­a­tors to pres­sure Is­rael to stop its “vi­o­la­tions” of the cease­fire.

Is­raeli troops shoot Pales­tin­ian man in Gaza, health of­fi­cials say

Is­raeli troops opened fire Wednes­day on a group of peo­ple in cen­tral Gaza, killing a Pales­tin­ian man, a hos­pi­tal said.

At least two oth­ers were wound­ed in the at­tack that took place east of the Mag­hazi refugee camp, ac­cord­ing to Al-Aqsa Mar­tyrs Hos­pi­tal, which re­ceived the ca­su­al­ties, the lat­est among Pales­tini­ans since the cease­fire was reached.

Is­rael’s mil­i­tary said it did not have enough in­for­ma­tion about the in­ci­dent to com­ment.

Al­so Wednes­day, the mil­i­tary said its troops tar­get­ed a group of six mil­i­tants in the south­ern city of Rafah, killing one. The mil­i­tary state­ment said that the mil­i­tants had “most like­ly emerged from the un­der­ground ter­ror in­fra­struc­ture in the area.” Troops then searched a near­by build­ing, killing three more and ap­pre­hend­ing two, it said.

Since the truce took ef­fect, the Gaza Health Min­istry said, 345 Pales­tini­ans were killed and 889 were wound­ed in the strip as of Tues­day.

It said at least 69,775 Pales­tini­ans have been killed and 170,863 in­jured in Is­rael’s of­fen­sive in Gaza. It does not dis­tin­guish be­tween civil­ians and com­bat­ants in its fig­ures, but has said women and chil­dren make up a ma­jor­i­ty of those killed. The min­istry is staffed by med­ical pro­fes­sion­als and main­tains de­tailed records viewed as gen­er­al­ly re­li­able by in­de­pen­dent ex­perts.

Turk­ish, Qatari and Egypt­ian of­fi­cials meet on cease­fire

Turkey’s in­tel­li­gence chief Ibrahim Kalin met in Cairo on Tues­day with Qatar’s Prime Min­is­ter and For­eign Min­is­ter Sheikh Mo­hammed bin Ab­dul­rah­man Al Thani and Egypt’s in­tel­li­gence chief Hasan Re­shat to dis­cuss ad­vanc­ing to the sec­ond phase of the Gaza cease­fire agree­ment, a Turk­ish se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cial said.

The talks al­so cen­tered on in­ten­si­fy­ing joint ef­forts with the Unit­ed States to strength­en the truce, ac­cord­ing to the of­fi­cial who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty in line with Turk­ish reg­u­la­tions.

The three al­so agreed to deep­en co­op­er­a­tion with the Civ­il-Mil­i­tary Co­or­di­na­tion Cen­ter (CM­CC), the U.S.-led cen­ter in Is­rael over­see­ing the cease­fire, to re­move ob­sta­cles and pre­vent vi­o­la­tions, en­sur­ing the cease­fire is up­held with­out in­ter­rup­tion, the of­fi­cial added.

In­done­sia pre­pares troops for Gaza sta­bi­liza­tion force

In­done­sia, the world’s largest Mus­lim-ma­jor­i­ty na­tion with a long ex­pe­ri­ence in U.N. peace­keep­ing mis­sions, is among the coun­tries the U.S. has dis­cussed the ISF plan with, in ad­di­tion to Azer­bai­jan, Egypt and Qatar.

“We are now in the se­lec­tion phase for the peace­keep­ing force,” Gen. Agus Subianto, Chief of the In­done­sian Armed Forces or TNI, told re­porters Tues­day af­ter a hear­ing with law­mak­ers in the cap­i­tal, Jakar­ta. “Lat­er, it’s planned that the mis­sion will be led by a three-star gen­er­al.”

He said the con­tin­gent will form a com­pos­ite brigade con­sist­ing of health, en­gi­neer­ing and mech­a­nized sup­port bat­tal­ions. TNI is al­so prepar­ing sup­port­ing as­sets for the mis­sion in Gaza, in­clud­ing three hos­pi­tal war­ships, the C-130 Her­cules mil­i­tary trans­port air­craft and a he­li­copter.

De­fense Min­is­ter Sjafrie Sjam­soed­din added that the fi­nal de­ploy­ment awaits an of­fi­cial or­der from Pres­i­dent Prabowo Subianto but “troops are al­ready un­der­go­ing mis­sion-spe­cif­ic train­ing.”

The U.N. re­port­ed that In­done­sia had been the fifth-largest uni­formed per­son­nel con­trib­u­tor, de­ploy­ing 2,731 in­di­vid­u­als on peace­keep­ing op­er­a­tions as of Sep­tem­ber.

Is­raeli de­fense min­is­ter says re­la­tion­ship with mil­i­tary chief in­tact de­spite spat

De­fense Min­is­ter Is­rael Katz said in the Is­raeli par­lia­ment Wednes­day that a re­cent spat with the mil­i­tary’s chief of staff was not pre­vent­ing them from work­ing to­geth­er.

“Re­gard­ing the chief of staff, we have worked, are work­ing, and will work to­geth­er in every­thing re­lat­ed to the op­er­a­tional are­nas of the State of Is­rael on all fronts,” said Katz. “There is con­stant di­a­logue.”

Katz and chief of staff Lt. Gen Eyal Za­mir have ex­changed jabs in re­cent days over the de­fense min­is­ter’s de­ci­sion to im­pose an ex­ter­nal re­view on the mil­i­tary’s in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion of its con­duct on Oct. 7, 2023, fol­low­ing the Hamas at­tack.

Katz is a Ne­tanyahu loy­al­ist, un­der whose lead­er­ship the Is­raeli gov­ern­ment has long re­sist­ed an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to what went wrong that day.

KHAN YOU­NIS, Gaza Strip (AP)