The bodies of four hostages, including the Bibas family, who have come to represent the hostage issue that has engulfed Israel since the start of the Gaza War, are scheduled to be turned over by Hamas on Thursday.
This is the first time that Hamas has turned over remains in this way since the war was started by its onslaught on Israel on October 7, 2023.
The bodies of Shiri Bibas, her two small boys, Kfir and Ariel, and a fourth hostage, Oded Lifshitz, will be returned to Khan Yunis in southern Gaza, according to the Palestinian militant group.
Footage of their abduction, filmed and broadcast by Hamas militants during their attack on Israel, showed the mother and her sons Ariel, then four, and Kfir, just nine months old, being seized from their home near the Gaza border.
Yarden Bibas, the boys’ father and Shiri’s husband, was abducted separately on October 7, 2023 and was released from the Gaza Strip in a previous hostage-prisoner exchange on February 1.
Following more than 15 months of conflict in the Gaza Strip, Israel and Hamas agreed to a tenuous ceasefire on January 19 that included the repatriation of their remains.
Thursday will be “a very difficult day for the State of Israel — a heartbreaking day, a day of grief,” according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In the first phase of the truce, terrorists have so far freed 19 Israeli captives in exchange for almost 1,100 Palestinian prisoners in a series of swaps brokered by the Red Cross.
Of the remaining 14 Gaza hostages eligible for release under phase one, Israel says eight are dead.
The Bibas family members have become national symbols of the hostage ordeal, encapsulating the despair that has gripped the nation since the Hamas attack.
While their deaths are largely accepted as fact abroad after Hamas said they were killed in an Israeli air strike early in the war, Israel has never confirmed the claim and many remain unconvinced — including the Bibas family.
Late on Wednesday, the Israeli campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said it had been informed about the “heart-shattering” news of the deaths of the three Bibas family members.
The Bibas family said it would wait for a confirmation from official channels.
“Should we receive devastating news, it must come through the proper official channels after all identification procedures are completed,” it said in a statement late Wednesday.
Netanyahu’s administration stated on Wednesday that it had received a list of the captives whose remains were to be turned over and that the families had been notified, although Israeli authorities have not formally named any of those to be returned.
According to a Wednesday report by public broadcaster Kan, the national forensic medical institute in Tel Aviv has mobilized ten doctors to speed up the identification procedure.
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