The International Committee of the Red Cross has decried a “recovery” that Hamas staged of hostage remains in Gaza and called it “unacceptable,” but the Israeli Foreign Ministry accused the organization being complicit in the charade.
“We appreciate the Red Cross condemnation of Hamas’s staged ‘burials’ and ‘discoveries’ of hostage bodies, which they previously extracted from Hamas holding sites,” the Israeli ministry stated on Wednesday.
“There seems to be a gap between what the Red Cross office knows and reality, given footage of Red Cross staff at the deception,” the ministry said. “We trust the Red Cross will take action regarding lies their staff apparently report upwards.”
A spokesman for the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office told JNS that the terror organization tried to pull a fast one on both Israel and on U.S. President Donald Trump.”
“Hamas cheated President Trump. Hamas also cheated the Red Cross during this process,” the spokesman told JNS. “We want to believe they weren’t part of this.”
“Their role is to execute the mission to bring our hostages back home,” he added.
The Red Cross told JNS on Tuesday that it hadn’t been aware that a slain hostage’s body “had been placed there prior to their arrival.”
Drone footage, which the Israeli military posted online, shows terrorists throwing the body out of a window into a pit and covering it with dirt, in front of what appeared to be a Red Cross team. The Red Cross staff appeared to look on as the remains were reburied.
The Red Cross denied the sequence of events, which the video footage appeared to show, in its statement to JNS on Tuesday.
“Our team only observed what appeared to be the recovery of remains without prior knowledge of the circumstances leading up to it,” it said.
The Red Cross added that “it is unacceptable that a fake recovery was staged, when so much depends on this agreement being upheld and when so many families are still anxiously awaiting news of their loved ones.”
The Israel Defense Forces stated that the video shows that Hamas “is attempting to create a false impression of efforts to locate the bodies, while in fact holding deceased hostages whose remains it refuses to release as required by the agreement.”
The IDF said that the terror group is also making “false claims of shortages in engineering equipment, equipment that is clearly unnecessary for the transfer of remains, and therefore these claims do not constitute an obstacle to the return of the remaining deceased hostages.”
Under Trump’s peace plan, Hamas committed to handing over all 48 hostages—living and deceased—on Oct. 13. Israel liberated 20 living captives that day, but Hamas has slow-walked the return of the 28 bodies.
On Monday night, Hamas released the remains of Israeli hostage Ofir Tzarfati, whose body Israel had already retrieved, and not a 16th body, in violation of the U.S.-brokered ceasefire deal in the Strip.
Israel recovered Tzarfati’s body from Gaza as part of a military operation in 2023, the Prime Minister’s Office stated. It added that Hamas’s refusal to return a new hostage body constituted a “clear violation” of the deal.
On Saturday, Trump urged Hamas to return the remains of deceased hostages the terrorists still hold within 48 hours or face action by “the other countries involved” in the agreement.
An urgent discussion between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and representatives of the Israeli security establishment ended on Tuesday without any decision on Jerusalem’s response to Hamas’s ceasefire violations.
A senior Israeli official told Israel’s Channel 12 that the IDF presented a series of possible moves, including renewing attacks on the Strip. Netanyahu reportedly said that there needed to be coordination with the Trump administration to determine the next step.
