( JTA ) — The Israeli army reported that a number of bodies have been recovered in the Gaza Strip, and the main group representing the hostage families promised a massive protest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s failure to achieve a deal that would release hostages.
“The IDF located a number of bodies during combat in the Gaza Strip,” the army spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said just before midnight on Saturday. “At this time, the troops are still operating in the area and are carrying out a process to extract and identify the bodies that will last several hours. We ask to refrain from spreading rumors.”
The statement followed several hours in which rumors of the retrievals, including the possible identities of those who had been killed, spread widely on Israeli social media and at the regular Saturday night mass protest in Tel Aviv to support an immediate ceasefire deal.
Addressing the rumors to the crowd, the relative of a hostage said those believed dead were “young hostages who were alive just a week ago.” Protesters checked their phones and gasped, a participant said.
Hagari’s statement came after the demonstration ended. Within a half hour of his statement, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum blamed Netanyahu and said it would mount protests.
“Netanyahu abandoned the hostages!” the forum, the largest of several bodies representing the 107 or so hostages believed to be remaining in the Gaza Strip, said on X, in Hebrew . “That is now a fact. Starting tomorrow, this country will quake. We call on the public to get ready. We are bringing the country to a stop! The abandonment is done!” It said it would provide more details by Sunday morning.
A subsequent tweet was of a graphic of a blood-red hand with the slogan : “We are stopping the country. An end to abandonment.”
Reports in recent weeks have said that Netanyahu has resisted a U.S.-brokered deal with Hamas that the Israeli military establishment favors, in part because it wants to focus on the burgeoning military threat from Hezbollah on Israel’s border with Lebanon.
Differences over whether to accept the deal culminated on Thursday in a shouting match between Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant , according to multiple news outlets .
Families of Israeli-Americans held hostage brought to a standstill the Republican and Democratic conventions this summer with their appeals, leading tens of thousands of delegates in cries of “Bring them home!”
President Joe Biden commented on the news out of Israel on Saturday, reiterating his call for a ceasefire deal and saying that he believed there had been recent positive movement. About the bodies retrieved, he said, “There’s a lot of speculation on who they are. I’m not at liberty to do that at this moment.”
Hamas terrorists took about 250 hostages on Oct. 7, when they attacked southern Israel. More than 100 were freed in a ceasefire deal in November, shortly after the war began. Since then, Israeli troops have rescued eight hostages alive — including one man last week — and also retrieved the bodies of some hostages, including six this month whose bodies indicated they had been shot while captive in Gaza . Before Saturday, Israel estimated that slightly more than 100 hostages remain in Gaza, at least 34 of whom it believed to be dead.
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