The biggest story of the week was Donald Trump's success in securing a peace deal between Israel and Hamas, to the point that the president flew to the Middle East for the agreement's signing.
Late Tuesday night, that was all put at risk.
According to reports, Hamas has not returned all the dead Israeli hostages, and the group reportedly also produced a body that did not belong to any of the known captives.
The return of hostages taken by Hamas, both dead and alive, has been a sticking point throughout this ordeal amid efforts to achieve peace between Israel and Hamas.
So, when Hamas agreed to return all the hostages, whether living or deceased, as part of Trump’s 20-point plan, it was a huge deal.
Hamas did return the 20 known living hostages, doing so earlier than expected, but problems emerged when the remains of dead hostages were set to be returned.
For starters, details are beginning to emerge about how the captives were tortured and killed. But an even larger problem looms… Hamas does not appear to have all the promised bodies.
At this point, many of the families of the hostages taken are only looking to have their remains returned so they can provide a proper burial and get some closure.
Initially, Hamas returned four dead bodies, but only three of them were confirmed to have been the bodies of Israelis known to have been held.
The fourth body was reportedly that of a Palestinian. Not only that, but Hamas had failed to deliver roughly two dozen more hostage bodies, bringing to light the question of whether the group even knew where they were located.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated, “We will not compromise on this and will not stop our efforts until we return the last deceased hostage, until the last one.”
The peace deal cannot move forward to the next stage until all the bodies are returned, so this situation is clearly putting the entire agreement at risk. Not only that, Israel seems like it is champing at the bit to go back after Hamas if it fails to deliver the remains.
Shosh Bedrosian, a spokesperson for the prime minister’s office, stated, “It is confirmed the [fourth] body is not of a hostage. … Hamas, the terror organization is required to uphold its commitments … and return all our hostages as part of the implementation of this agreement. We will not compromise on this. … [Hamas] made specific confirmation to President Trump.”
This has sent a bit of a panic wave through all parties involved, to the point that some experts are unsure if Hamas even knows where the bodies are located. Yousef Munayyer, executive director of the Arab Center in Washington, D.C., explained, “So what's concerning now is that the Israelis seem to be acting as if this was a surprise, when in fact we knew that this was going to be an immense challenge. Remember, some 83 percent of structures in the Gaza Strip have been partially or completely destroyed, and there's very little heavy equipment with which to do the searching.”
Trump is somehow going to have to calm Israel down, or this entire peace deal will fall apart. To be clear, what Hamas did is horrifying, but the bodies at issue are likely scattered all over Gaza, as Hamas was constantly moving and was known to have used the remains as shields. As Munayyer hinted, some of these bodies are likely buried in the rubble and may not be recovered until cleanup and rebuilding efforts begin. So now the question is whether this explanation will satisfy Israel or if its leaders will call off the deal and try to obliterate Hamas. If Hamas did not have all the bodies, I cannot understand why they would agree to the agreement's terms. They could have been honest about the location of the bodies and worked that into the deal, and now the entire ceasefire scenario has been put at risk.
