Hamas on Thursday returned the bodies of Israeli infant Kfir Bibas and his four-year-old brother Ariel, the youngest hostages taken during the Palestinian militant group’s October 7, 2023 attack and among the most poignant symbols of that day’s trauma.
Red Cross vehicles drove away from the handover site in the Gaza Strip with four black coffins that had been placed on a stage. Each of the caskets had a small picture of the hostages.
Hamas handed over the bodies of the two boys and their mother Shiri Bibas, along with that of a fourth Israeli hostage, Oded Lifschitz, under the Gaza ceasefire agreement reached last month with the backing of the United States and the mediation of Qatar and Egypt.
‘Very Difficult Day’
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a brief video statement that Thursday would be “a very difficult day for the state of Israel. An upsetting day, a day of grief.”
Hundreds of people gathered in the winter cold ahead of the handover at Khan Younis in southern Gaza. Armed Hamas militants in black and camouflage uniforms toured the area.
One militant stood beside a poster of a man standing over coffins wrapped in Israeli flags. Instead of legs, he had tree roots in the ground, suggesting the land belongs to Palestinians. The poster read “The Return of the War=The Return of your Prisoners in Coffins”.
Kfir Bibas was nine months old when the Bibas family, including their father Yarden, was abducted at Kibbutz Nir Oz, one of a string of communities near Gaza that were overrun by Hamas-led attackers from Gaza on October 7.
Death Of Israeli Hostages
Hamas said in November 2023 that the boys and their mother had been killed in an Israeli airstrike but their deaths were never confirmed by Israeli authorities and even at the last minute, some refused to accept they were dead.
“Shiri and the kids became a symbol,” said Yiftach Cohen, a resident of Nir Oz, which lost around a quarter of its inhabitants, either killed or kidnapped, during the Oct. 7 assault. “I still hope that they will be alive.”
Yarden Bibas was returned in an earlier exchange of hostages for prisoners this month. But the family said this week their “journey is not over” until they received final confirmation of what happened to the boys and their mother.
“We wake up to a difficult morning for all of us. A morning that sharpens the cruelty of our enemies and the justice of our determined war against them until they are destroyed from the face of the earth,” Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said in a post on the X social media platform.
At the handover site, a large poster was hung up, depicting Netanyahu as a vampire standing over images of the four hostages. “The War Criminal Netanyahu & His Nazi Army Killed Them with Missiles from Zionist Warplanes,” the poster read.
Identification Of Bodies
Following the handover, the remains will be moved into coffins draped with the Israeli flag and an army rabbi will provide a short ceremony. They will then be taken into Israel to the national forensic institute to be identified, a process that could take a few hours or even a few days.
Only after identification will there be a formal announcement of their deaths and a funeral.
The handover marks the first return of dead bodies during the current agreement and Israel is not expected to confirm their identities until full DNA checks have been completed.
Despite accusations on both sides of ceasefire breaches, the fragile agreement that took effect on January 19 has held up since the first in a series of exchanges of hostages in Gaza for Palestinian prisoners and detainees held by Israel.
Netanyahu Faces Criticism
Netanyahu has faced criticism from his far-right coalition allies for agreeing to the deal, which some in Israel feel rewards Hamas and leaves the militant group in place in Gaza.
But successive surveys have shown broad support among the public for the ceasefire, and thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets to demand the government stick to the deal until all the remaining hostages are returned.
Israel launched its war in the Gaza Strip after the Hamas-led attack that killed some 1,200 people, according to Israeli tallies, with 251 kidnapped. The Israeli military campaign has killed some 48,000 people, Palestinian health authorities say, and left densely populated Gaza largely in ruins.
(With inputs from Reuters)
