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Israel must agree a ceasefire deal now and bring the remaining hostages home “before they all die”, families and friends said on Tuesday as the bodies of six more captives – including a British-Israeli citizen – were retrieved from Gaza.
Nadav Popplewell, 51, who is originally form Wakefield, West Yorkshire, was retrieved by Israeli forces in an overnight operation along with Yagev Buchshtab, 35; Alexander Dancyg, 76; Avraham Munder, 79; Yoram Metzger, 80; and Chaim Perry, 80.
“We need to start bringing people home alive and not dead – and that needs to happen soon,” said Adele Raemer, an American-Israeli teacher who lived three doors down from Mr Popplewell’s family in Kibbutz Nirim and was a family friend.
“The Israeli military has already done a lot of damage in Gaza, and I expect progress. [The hostages] have been there long enough,” she said.
It came as US secretary of state Antony Blinken was in Egypt seeking to keep truce talks on track, while inside Gaza at least 12 people were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a school that was housing displaced people in northern Gaza City. Israel said it had targeted a Hamas command centre at the site.
Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid called out prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu for not acting quicker in talks, saying the recovery of the bodies shows that a deal is needed now.
“Enough with the briefings, enough with the tweets, enough with the rhymes in front of cameras,” he said. “All of Netanyahu’s attempts to sabotage the negotiations should stop. A deal now, before they all die.”
Gil Dickmann, whose cousin Carmel Gat, 39, is among the remaining hostages, said the news that all six hostages were confirmed dead and the bodies returned was “devastating” for the families of those who are still held in the bombarded strip.
“It shows how urgent it is to get the others out. There are still tens of hostages held in [Hamas’s] tunnels who may be breathing their last breath now,” he told The Independent. “It’s unjust that we have let them rot for more than 300 days, with no solution on the horizon.”
Calling it a “global obligation” to get them out, Mr Dickmann also criticised Mr Netanyahu for suggesting there may be no hostage deal on the table.
“If we don’t push for a deal now we are going to lose the lives of more hostages. It’s not too late to save many of them.
“These six hostages should have been saved if there had been a deal on time in November. There are tens of hostages that are alive and in the hands of Hamas. If we don’t act quickly, they will share the same fate.”
In May, Hamas released a video claiming that Mr Popplewell, who was among the 250 taken hostage during its 7 October attack on Israel, died after being wounded in an Israeli airstrike in April. A month later the Israeli military confirmed Mr Popplewell’s death saying he was among four hostages “killed while together in the area of Khan Younis during our operation there against Hamas.”
Mr Popplewell, a diabetic, was captured along with his 79-year-old mother, Channah Peri; she was freed during a November ceasefire in exchange for Palestinians imprisoned in Israel. His brother was killed in the attack.
In a statement about the recovery of the bodies, Mr Netanyahu said “our hearts ache for the terrible loss”.
Inside Gaza, the civil defence authority – first responders operating under Hamas – said rescuers were struggling to recover missing people believed to be trapped under the rubble at Mustafa Hafez school in western Rimal after the Israeli strike. Among the dead was Hamza Murtaja, a Palestinian journalist whose family said he produced news reports from Gaza for multiple foreign media outlets.
Moatassim Murtaja said his brother Hamza had gone to the school to record interviews with some of the 700 displaced civilians who were sheltering there.
“The Israeli military bombed the school as he was working. I called the civil defence to find out what happened and they told me my brother had been killed,” he told The Independent. He said his other brother, Yasser Murtaja, also a journalist, had been killed in 2018.
“I am begging the world to stop the violence and the killing of the journalists. This the second brother who is a journalist that I have lost.”
Israel’s military said it had conducted “a precise strike” on militants “operating within a Hamas command and control centre” which had been embedded inside the school and was used to plan attacks against its troops and Israel. It said “numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians”.
Israel also continued its offensive in the southern Gaza Strip, with further intense fire reported in Khan Younis.
Ahmad, a Palestinian fleeing the area following Israeli evacuation orders, told The Independent: “Even in the so-called humanitarian areas which aren’t under evacuation orders the drones were shooting everywhere, we had bullet holes in our tent.
“We had to flee by foot as there were so many cars blocking the road.”
Israel’s bombardment of Gaza following the Hamas attack has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, according to health officials in the strip. Air and ground operations have caused an unprecedented level of destruction and forced the vast majority of the enclave’s 2.3 million residents to flee their homes, many of them multiple times.
In Egypt, Mr Blinken met President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, whose country has been helping mediate the on-off talks for months, along with the US and Qatar. Mr Sisi said after the meeting that it was time to put an end to the war and warned of the conflict expanding in the region, with the Middle East still waiting for Iran to retaliate against the killing of a Hamas leader on its soil.
But challenges clearly remain over a deal. Mr Netanyahu is said to have told a group of families of fallen soldiers and Gaza hostages opposing a ceasefire deal that he is “not sure” there will be a breakthrough.
Meanwhile, Hamas said the latest proposal presented to it was a “reversal” of what it previously agreed, and accused Washington of acquiescing to what it called “new conditions” from Israel.
