The Body Returned Is Not An Israeli Hostage, Netanyahu Considers Hamas Violating Ceasefire

JAKARTA - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stressed that his party would respond to the mistake of handing over the body from Hamas. Israel said the bodies returned were not the missing Israeli hostages.

Israel considers this a violation of the Gaza ceasefire.

Hamas said it complied with the ceasefire and made the best possible to find the hostages' bodies, but was hampered by the lack of equipment to identify bodies.

Netanyahu said the bodies handed over by the militant group last night belonged to a hostage whose bodies had been found by Israeli forces at the start of the war, not one of the 13 hostages who had not been found.

He will meet with his defense officials on Tuesday night to decide on "Israel's next move" in response.

Netanyahu said the body handed over on Monday was Ofir Tzarfati, an Israeli citizen who was killed in the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, whose body was found by Israeli forces in the early weeks of fighting.

Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said finding all the bodies was a challenge due to the scale of the damage in Gaza. Nonetheless, "Hamas will continue to do everything possible to deliver the remaining bodies until this issue is completely resolved and as soon as possible," Qassem told Reuters.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir urged Netanyahu to take firm action against Hamas.

However, any response is likely to be approved first by Washington, which is a fragile ceasefire intermediary this month, which has halted the war for two years, a senior Israeli official said.

The search for hostages who died amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in Khan Younis.