Discovery of 6 Dead Hostages in Gaza Spurs Protest and Division in Israel

JERUSALEM — The Israeli military said Sunday that six bodies found in a tunnel under the Gaza Strip belonged to hostages who had been killed by Hamas, setting off a wave of grief and anger in Israel and further cleaving the deep divisions among the public, and the country’s leaders, over the future course of the war.

Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the military’s chief spokesperson, said the bodies had been recovered a day earlier in the labyrinths under the southern city of Rafah, about 1 kilometer from where a seventh hostage, Farhan al-Qadi, was found alive last week.

“They were brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists a short time before we reached them,” Hagari said. The Israeli Ministry of Health said in a statement Sunday that the hostages were killed by “a number of short-range shots” and that they had died about “48-72 hours before their examination.”

In an initial statement, Hamas did not directly address the accusations but said responsibility for the deaths lay with Israel, which it blamed for the lack of an agreement to stop the fighting in Gaza. Hamas later asserted in a separate statement that the hostages were killed by the Israeli military’s bullets, without providing evidence.

The recovery of the hostages’ bodies put into stark relief the competing priorities of Israel’s leaders: those intent on dismantling Hamas through the pursuit and killing of its fighters and officials, and those who want to reach a truce that would bring home the dozens of captives still believed to be alive in the enclave.

For many in Israel, the news brought months of simmering anger to a furious boil Sunday, much of it directed at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose critics blamed him for refusing to make a cease-fire deal that would bring the hostages back. Protesters flooded the streets of Tel Aviv and other cities Sunday night in what was one of the largest demonstrations in the nearly 11 months of war.

Supporters of a truce called for further mass demonstrations as well as a strike set to begin Monday.

Among the captives declared dead Sunday was Hersh Goldberg-Polin, a dual American Israeli citizen born in Berkeley, California, whose parents have been some of the most prominent of those advocating for a cease-fire and hostage-release deal and made that case in a speech last month at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Hawkish elements in the Israeli government, by contrast, called Sunday for the war to be intensified in retaliation for the hostages’ deaths.

And amid that debate, the Israeli military continued its bombardment of Gaza on Sunday, striking a former school in Gaza City that the military said Hamas was using as a “command and control complex.”

Details surrounding the deaths of the Israeli hostages and the recovery of their bodies remained sparse Sunday.

Hagari said the troops who found the bodies had an “understanding” that there might be hostages in the area but had no information on their exact location. Above ground, he said, “fighting was taking place and our forces were killing terrorists.” He prefaced his remarks by saying they were based on an “initial” assessment.

Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, another spokesperson for the Israeli military, said Sunday on CNN that the discovery of the hostages’ bodies was not the result of a “specific mission to release hostages.”

In addition to Goldberg-Polin, the dead were identified as Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Alexander Lobanov, Almog Sarusi and Ori Danino.

The victims’ ages ranged from 23 to 40, according to a group representing families of hostages. Five of them had been captured at a dance music festival in southern Israel. The sixth, Gat, was taken from the nearby village of Be’eri.

Before the Israeli military’s announcement, President Joe Biden issued a statement saying he was “devastated and outraged” by the killing of the hostages, singling out Goldberg-Polin.

“Hersh was among the innocents brutally attacked while attending a music festival for peace in Israel,” Biden said. “He lost his arm helping friends and strangers during Hamas’ savage massacre. He had just turned 23.”

Biden vowed to keep working toward an agreement to secure the release of the hostages. But he also issued a warning: “Make no mistake, Hamas leaders will pay for these crimes.”

Netanyahu vowed Sunday to both avenge the deaths of the hostages and pursue a deal to secure the release of the remaining captives.

“You will pay the price,” Netanyahu said in a statement, adding, “We will pursue you, we will find you and we will settle accounts with you.”

The prime minister said he was “personally committed” to a deal that would return the hostages “and ensure our security and our existence.”

He has said recently that he wants a “partial deal” that would allow for Israel to resume the war after freeing some hostages. He has also suggested that Israel and Hamas should agree on a way to screen Palestinians returning north for weapons.

Many in Israel on Sunday lashed out at Netanyahu and his handling of the war. His own defense minister, Yoav Gallant, appeared to criticize Netanyahu’s approach. In response to the news of the dead hostages, Gallant called for the reversal of a Cabinet decision last week to keep Israel’s forces in the Philadelphi Corridor, a narrow strip of land along the border of Gaza and Egypt that Israeli officials say Hamas has used to smuggle in weapons.

Hamas has demanded a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, including from that border area. In the Cabinet meeting last week, Gallant strongly opposed the decision to keep Israeli forces in the Philadelphi Corridor, insinuating that it was tantamount to abandoning the hostages, Israel’s Channel 12 reported.

Protesters calling for an immediate cease-fire gathered Sunday evening in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem while Israel’s largest labor union declared a “complete strike” to begin Monday morning.

Yair Lapid, the leader of the opposition in Israel’s parliament, publicly accused Netanyahu on Sunday of turning his back on the hostages.

“They were alive,” he said in a video statement. “Netanyahu and the Cabinet of death decided not to save them. There still are living hostages there, and it’s still possible to do a deal. Netanyahu isn’t doing it for political reasons.”

Opponents of Netanyahu have argued that the prime minister has undermined efforts to reach a cease-fire deal with Hamas because doing so would anger his far-right coalition allies, threatening to collapse his government.

Mediators from Qatar, Egypt and the United States have made several attempts in recent weeks to bridge the gaps between Israel and Hamas, without success. In addition to a full withdrawal, Hamas has demanded that Israel agree to end the war and allow displaced Palestinians to return to northern Gaza without passing through Israeli checkpoints.

The most recent proposals under negotiation would have seen female and wounded hostages released in the first phase of a multipart agreement — suggesting that several of the hostages killed in Gaza might have been among them.

Netanyahu has consistently blamed Hamas for blocking progress toward a deal. On Sunday, he accused the group of not negotiating seriously since December and said the group’s acts “required Israel to do everything so it can’t perpetrate these atrocities again.”

Israel and Hamas did manage to agree to localized pauses in the fighting to allow a polio vaccination drive, beginning Sunday, as health workers raced to prevent an outbreak of the disease amid the devastation of Gaza.

But Israel is now fighting on three fronts, fueling fears that the violence could spread into a wider regional war. In addition to its campaign in Gaza, which the territory’s health authorities said has killed tens of thousands, Israel has been trading fire across its northern border with the Lebanese militia Hezbollah. That group began to fire into Israel in solidarity with Hamas on Oct. 8.

At the same time violence is worsening in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where assailants killed three Israeli police officers Sunday morning. The officers were shot and killed as they drove along a highway in the southern part of the West Bank, close to a major checkpoint where traffic is screened before entering Israel, according to statements from the Israeli police and Magen David Adom, the emergency medical service.

The Israeli military raided three major cities in the northern West Bank last week, killing at least 22 people, according to the Palestinian health authorities. The military said the operation was aimed at quelling armed Palestinian groups, but critics warned that the death and destruction caused by the raids risked encouraging the same violence that they aimed to reduce.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .