Hamas returns bodies of four dead hostages amid Israeli threat to restrict Gaza aid

Hamas has returned the bodies of four hostages as part of an ongoing ceasefire deal, which were later identified by Israel.

The Israeli military has identified the two hostages as Guy Illouz, a 26-year-old Israeli, and Bipin Joshi, a Nepalese citizen who was 23, while the other two were Yossi Sharabi, a 53-year-old Israeli, and Daniel Peretz, 22, Israeli-South African dual national.

Israeli officials said the government would restrict aid to Gaza and delay reopening the Rafah border crossing with Egypt in response to Hamas’s failure to return the bodies of 24 additional hostages on Monday.

Hamas, on the other hand, has said that it was not able to return the bodies as not all the hostages’ burial sites are known.

Who were the hostages?

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said that after conducting a forensic testing of the bodies, representatives had informed the families of the hostages that the bodies had been returned to Israel.

The IDF said Illouz, a sound technician from the central Israeli town of Ra’anana, was “injured and abducted alive” by Hamas gunmen after fleeing the attack on the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023.

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“Guy died from his wounds after not receiving proper medical treatment while held captive by Hamas,” it added.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum in Israel said that fellow hostage Maya Regev revealed that Illouz was “kidnapped unconscious and lay alone for a whole week, tied to his bed.”

Meanwhile, Bipin Joshi, an agriculture student, had been in Israel for only a few weeks when Hamas gunmen attacked Kibbutz Alumim two years ago.

The Hostage Families Forum says he “fled to a shelter in the kibbutz with other foreign students, deflected a live grenade with his bare hands, and through his bravery saved many lives”.

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The IDF has said that Joshi was “murdered in captivity during the first months of the war”.

Yossi Sharabi was abducted from his home in Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7, along with his brother Eli, whose British-Israeli wife and two daughters were killed in the attack.
An IDF investigation last year concluded that Yossi was likely killed when a nearby Israeli airstrike caused a building to collapse.

‘We will disarm Hamas’

US President Donald Trump said Tuesday that “we will disarm” Hamas if the Palestinian militants refuse to do it themselves, as he called for the group to release the bodies of hostages in Gaza.

“They’re going to disarm, because they said they were going to disarm. And if they don’t disarm, we will disarm them,” Trump told reporters at the White House about Hamas, hours after returning from Israel and Egypt.

“It will happen quickly and perhaps violently, but they will disarm.”

Hamas has so far refused to disarm despite it being a key part of the next phase of Trump’s 20-point plan for a ceasefire and longer-term peace agreement in West Asia.

With inputs from agencies