Summary
We’re pausing our live coverage of the Middle East crisis now – it’s just after 8pm in Tel Aviv and Gaza City. Here’s a summary of what’s been happening today:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed revenge for what he described as a “cruel and malicious violation” of the ceasefire agreement after authorities determined that a body released by Hamas was not an Israeli mother of two small boys, as the militant group had promised. Hamas turned over four bodies yesterday as part of the ceasefire deal. They were supposed to have been those of Shiri Bibas, her sons, Kfir and Ariel, and Oded Lifshitz, who was 83 when he was abducted during the October 7 2023 attack by Hamas that ignited the war. Israeli authorities said they had positively identified the remains of the two boys and of Lifshitz. However, the fourth body was determined to be that of an unidentified woman from Gaza.
Hamas suggested a mix-up of remains might have occurred after Israeli bombing of the area where both the Israeli hostages and Palestinians were present. The group said it would “conduct a thorough review.”
Despite the tense exchanges, there were indications that the ceasefire deal’s next step — the release of six living Israeli hostages on Saturday in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners — would proceed as planned. Israel will free 602 Palestinian prisoners and detainees from jails as part of the swap.
The Bibas family accused Netanyahu of failing to protect their loved ones during Hamas’s 2023 attack and of failing to bring them home. “There is no forgiveness for abandoning them on October 7, and no forgiveness for abandoning them in captivity. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, we did not receive an apology from you in this painful moment,” Ofri Bibas, the sister-in-law of Shiri Bibas, said in a statement.
Netanyahu said he has ordered the Israeli military to carry out an intensive operation against what he called “centres of terrorism” in the West Bank. The Israeli prime minister also said on social media that he had ordered Shin Bet and police to increase “preventative” measures against attacks on Israeli cities. It followed a series of explosions on three parked buses in Bat Yam, a city outside Tel Aviv, on Thursday night. Authorities said they were a suspected terrorist attack. No injuries were reported.
Over half a million children have been left without education across Gaza and the West Bank, according to the International Rescue Committee (IRC). The NGO warned that vital aid for children in the region is being scuppered by increasing violence.
Saudi Arabia’s crown prince held a meeting of leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council states, Egypt and Jordan. The meeting hosted by Mohammed bin Salman had been described as “an informal brotherly gathering” by the state-run Saudi Press Agency. It came ahead of an Arab League summit likely to discuss the Gaza Strip after US President Donald Trump proposed America “take over” the territory and permanently resettle its Palestinian residents, a plan that Arab countries have universally rejected.
The leader of Sinn Fein will boycott St. Patrick’s day events in US over Gaza. Mary Lou McDonald, president of Sinn Fein and First Minister Michelle O’Neill, said they would not attend the celebrations after Trump’s call to exile Palestinians from the enclave.
Updated
Israel-Hamas swap to go ahead despite claim child hostages were killed with ‘bare hands’
Israelis and Palestinians are bracing for another tense hostage, prisoner and detainee exchange on Saturday amid uproar in Israel over allegations that two child hostages were “brutally murdered” by Hamas, and the group’s failure to deliver the body of their mother, instead returning the corpse of an unidentified woman.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement on Friday afternoon that autopsy results and military intelligence concluded that members of Hamas “used their bare hands” to kill Ariel Bibas, four, and his 10-month-old brother, Kfir, when they were seized in October 2023.
“Their father, [the recently released hostage] Yarden Bibas, looked me in the eyes and asked that the whole world know and be shocked by the way they murdered his children,” the military army spokesperson R Adm Daniel Hagari said in a video address.
In Israel and around the world, the fate of the Bibas family has come to embody the trauma of the Hamas attack that ignited the war in Gaza.
On Friday, Hamas released the names of the six living hostages the militants plan to release over the weekend under the terms of the ceasefire. The Palestinian prisoners media office said that more than 600 Palestinian prisoners were also to be freed.
The announcements are a sign that the fragile deal remains on track despite the tensions caused by the furore surrounding the Bibas’s fate.
