How will carrying out "powerful strikes " on Gaza help to get the bodies back?

Clause 4 of the ceasefire plan that both sides agreed to was that Within 72 hours of Israel publicly accepting this agreement, all hostages, alive and deceased, will be returned.

Israel couldn't reasonably be expected to know how hard this would be for Hamas as they didn't know where Hamas had hidden the bodies of the dead hostages. For example, some of their tunnels are still in good condition.

Nevertheless, it was reasonable I think to accept that Hamas couldn't actually do what it had promised within 72 hours. The hope was that they were trying in good faith to return as many as possible as quickly as possible. I think the antics of yesterday's fake return has really infuriated Israel as it seems like just more lies and game playing from Hamas.

There’s nothing frankly “positive” about what Israel is doing at present in bombing innocent people in Gaza:
“The Israeli strikes hit homes, schools and residential blocks in Gaza City and Beit Lahia in the north of Gaza, Bureij and Nuseirat in the centre, and Khan Younis in the south.
Witnesses in Gaza City described seeing "pillars of fire and smoke" rising into the air as explosions shook several residential areas.
Gaza's health ministry said a total of 104 people were killed, including 46 children and 20 women, and that more than 250 others were injured.”

One Israeli soldier dies and a country capable of highly selective action bombs schools and residential buildings. Killing 46 children.

Yeah- it’s really positive what Israel is doing.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgjdy5eevn2o

no longer restricting aid entering Gaza was also a condition of the ceasefire, a more important one than the retrieval of dead bodies I would think, but Israel has not facilitated this and yet it is not called out

I think Israelis should accept that their dead are no more significant than the dead of Palestinians and wait in line like everyone else rather than creating more dead bodies. They got the living hostages back. Not to be crass but their dead aren't getting anymore dead, there is no reason they can't wait like everyone else.

Killing children because of a delay on receiving dead bodies is disgusting, I think everyone can agree on that. It elevates the importance of Israeli dead over the lives of Palestinians which is obviously not reality, living Palestinians are more important than the already dead. Those children who killed were more important than the dead hostages and it would be great if everyone would just speak the truth on that rather than waffling pretending that there is any equivalence.

IDF says Gaza strikes targeted battalion and company commanders, weapons sites, tunnels.

The military says its strikes targeted dozens of terror operatives, including two battalion-level commanders, two deputy battalion commanders, and 16 company commanders in Hamas and other terror groups.

The military says it is not able to confirm yet that the Hamas commanders it targeted were killed in the strikes.

The IDF does, however, name several terrorists who it says infiltrated Israel on October 7 and were killed in the strikes in the past day.

They include: Muhammad Issa, a platoon commander in Hamas’s Nukhba Force; Fawaz Uwayda, a Nukhba Force cell commander; Muhammad Abu Shari’a and Nidal Abu Shari’a, both members of the Mujahideen Brigade’s terror group; and Hatem Maher Mousa Qudra, a Nukhba Force company commander who led the attack on Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha on October 7.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/idf-says-gaza-strikes-targeted-battalion-and-company-commanders-weapons-sites-tunnels/

@Twiglets1
I am not sure how Hamas could have guaranteed getting all the dead hostage bodies back to Israel and how Israel could have expected this to be easily done. Hamas was crazy to stage the most recent stunt of “finding” a body.

Would it be reasonable to expect them to be able to do this without major assistance and time? You must have seen pictures of Gaza.

Do you know what guarantee Hamas gave about this? I can’t find the details of the ceasefire agreement when it comes to return of deceased hostages.

I'm sure we would all like those in charge to work peacefully to get all the bodies back home. But the bodies of the Israeli hostages that are being talked about were part of the ceasefire deal which gives them a special significance. Not to their families of course, but to the success or otherwise of the peace deal.

Unless you say you don't care about the peace deal, we should all be acutely aware of the special importance attached to these particular bodies - politically speaking.

You know some of them may never receive any remains back right?

The area was bombed the shit out of, didn't you notice? Netanyahu bombed the hostages he claimed to want to save🤔

It's not worth the lives of children though. Those families that have been waiting by the phone do you think they feel better now that 35 more children have been killed in their memory? 35 children dead who were alive yesterday because of a delay in getting back a body? I'm sorry but that's psycho behaviour and coming from the same army that shoots Palestinians trying to retrieve the bodies of their dead.

There are a hell of lot more than 13 families waiting for the bodies of their loved ones to be found. I'm sick of those people being erased from the conversation. There are 1000s of bodies lost in Gaza. 1000s of families waiting for their loved ones remains. Let's work peacefully to get them all back with their families instead of creating more dead bodies because someone somewhere has decided that those 13 are the most important.

One positive thing - the IDF says it has resumed enforcing the ceasefire today.

"Following a series of strikes, in which dozens of terror targets and terrorists were struck, the IDF has begun the renewed enforcement of the ceasefire in response to Hamas' violations," the military said.

"As part of the strikes, the IDF and ISA struck 30 terrorists holding command positions within the terrorist organisations operating in the Gaza Strip," it added.

There is no Gazan military. It's all civilians. If they work for Hamas by picking up a gun or other role - they are still civilians.

There is no government in Gaza, it's been reduced to rubble. Hamas is just an insurgency now. Hamas will try to regroup and retain control in Gaza, maybe Netanyahu will help them like he has previously?

Do you remember when the US invaded Iraq? Any citizen who chose to defend their country was just labelled a terrorist to justify gunning them down.

It's an old tactic used by invading aggressors. Putin uses it during his invasion of Ukraine, calling Ukrainians that push back Nazis or terrorists.

This idea that it's all about Hamas and with Hamas gone all of a sudden Israel is going to stop controlling Gaza and subjugating Palastinians is total naivety!

Israeli's aren't taught to hate Hamas in schools, they are taught to hate Arabs and especially Palastinians.

No I can well see that might have been an over-arching plan- balancing one political opponent against another, and the PLA (seen as the legitimate successors of Arafat) had a certain legitimacy in the region. Although the fact that Abbas has been “fairly” elected as President of the PLA continually since I was at uni (at least as far back as I remember) 20 years ago, suggests that the PLA is just as corrupt.

The thing is I still don’t read this as BN actively “supporting” Hamas, but rather failing to take a condensed active stance against them in order to continue the destabilisation of the enemy political front. I happen to agree that it was a very mistaken policy, but, hindsight is 20/20 and all that- I can reasonably see why someone might have taken that action, even if I disagree with it. Perhaps he felt it was a risk that was manageable, that Mossad could contain any serious threat (as the Iron Dome had managed rocket incursions for decades). I couldn’t venture to explain his thoughts, but I think that the account of this policy as aimed at destabilising the PLA is probably close to the mark- and the added benefit that it lead to economic development of Gaza helps because the less a people are suffering economically the less likely they are to be taking risks in conflict. It turns out this didn’t work. He can be rightly criticised for it, but it doesn’t amount to him “supporting” them (in the way that the term “the unions support Labour” would ordinarily be understood.

This. People are failing to recognise that Hamas have deliberately caused this break in cease fire. They also killed a Palestinian soldier. If they do these things they will provoke a response from Israel. So called innocent people of Gaza have hidden Hamas within their midst and voted them in the first place.

and this does appear to be exactly what a large portion of the world thinks: Israel should not retaliate to the attacks of October 7. There should be no repercussions because the people who committed the atrocities hide in civilian locales. Which of course would only further exacerbate such attacks when people learn that hiding in hospitals lead to zero reprisals.

GW Bush came to power on a Presidential platform of the USA stepping back from international engagements (following on from
the Clinton years and the high US involvement in the Balkans). Then September 11 happened, and as a consequence the USA became embroiled in a 2 decades long, 20 trillion dollar engagement in the Middle East, that by conservative estimates put it somewhere between 3-4mn people dead (approx 800k dead from direct military action, of which approx 7k were US soldiers). No one seriously argued that because civilian deaths would follow the US shouldn’t engage in (originally) Afghanistan, then more widely Iraq and later conflict with ISIL. It’s weird to me that anyone thinks because civilian deaths might result that military action shouldn’t be taken against legitimate military targets. No one, anywhere else, thinks this is normal, or to be expected.

As for commenting on that article, then it says that the UN thinks Israel is guilty of genocide (or at least there is sufficient prima facie evidence to sustain that charge at the ICC). However, given that the UN and the ICC is essentially a body for grandstanding international politics I’m not quite sure why anyone takes it all that seriously. The UN speaks a lot and does little- well, I suppose discounting the UNWRA which was a tool for funnelling funds to Hamas, which appears to have been exceptionally effective. Forgive my cynicism, but one of the fundamental principles of any reasonable legal system is that it has an enforcement body. Law without police means, well, basically nothing. Why is there no established international police organisation? Because every government operates their foreign policy (including the operation of their armed forces) for the good of their own state (and hopefully the nation they represent). The idea that you would give money to an organisation that may end up taking action against you would be something that no one would (or ever has) signed up for.

The fact that certain Palestinian (or problematically Hamas) sympathetic operatives in the international legal order have managed to pull sufficient strings to get the indictment is no more evidence than if I took out a full page ad in the paper saying “my neighbour is guilty of murder”. I can’t prove it, I don’t have any reasonable hope of it being enforced, nor is there any outcome other than public opinion being influenced. It’s politics, not law or the action of systems of justice.

Absolutely horrible @OlderGlaswegianLivingInDevon . The pain of the family is unbearable.They can't grieve in peace.

Death toll has risen to 101 now last night including 35 children. I can only imagine how their families and parents feel after the optimism of a ceasefire.

Human beings capacity for inflicting pain on each other is unbelievable.

13 families were waiting the other evening for their telephone to ring,

to be given the news that it was their murdered family member that had been returned from hamas via the Red Cross and then the IDF.

Hundreds, thousands ( indeed surely millions ) of people were waiting around the world for this one hostage to return home to Israel.

it didn't happen.

instead hamas went through a sick farce.

hamas agreed to return ALL the hostages, Israel released 100's of prisoners and began a cease fire.

hamas have broken their agreement.

Surely no one expected the remaining hostages to be released in such tiny little groups of 4 then 3 then 2 then 1 etc.

meanwhile

13 families are still waiting...

I think you are not ready to accept that Israel actively wanted Hamas to have a stronghold in Gaza. It ensured arab neighbours sent millions to Hamas each month.

This was the policy of Israeli government - to keep Hamas in Gaza to prevent the PLO/Palestinian Authority from unifying Gaza and the West Bank. It did not want the prospect of a sovereign Palastinian state to ever be feasible.

It's a widely known policy and many people, even in Israel, are critical of Netanyahu for this. They believe it made Hamas stronger and enabled it to launch the October 7th attacks.

Israel letting in Palestinians to work is just making use of cheap labour.

One of the perks of having 2nd class citizens living trapped behind a wall - exploit them for cheap labour.

Copied from a different thread.

From the Facebook page of ' Bring Them Home Now ',
the hostages and missing families forum:
The family of Ofir Tzarfati, of blessed memory, who was kidnapped alive from the Nova Festival, murdered in captivity, and returned for burial in Israel, has released a new statement to the media from their home in Kiryat Ata.
Ofir was recovered by the IDF in late November 2023 and brought to burial in Israel. In March 2024, additional remains were returned.
Last night, more of his remains were brought back to Israel, marking the third time his family has had to reopen his grave.
Rishel Tzarfati, Ofir’s mother:
“I stand here today, forced once again to say goodbye to my son. For the third time. The third time I’ve been required to bury my Ofir.
There are no words that can contain this. This isn’t just pain, it’s ongoing emotional torture. A punch to the gut, an arrow to the heart, a wound that opens again and again.
What made the pain unbearable is the way Hamas chooses to play with the bodies of our children. With our pain. With videos, manipulations, and vile theatrics.
Hamas is lying to the world with false presentations of ‘searches’ and ‘discoveries,’ when it’s completely clear they know where most of the hostages are.”
Shoval Tzarfati, Ofir’s sister:
“Hamas executed a cruel manipulation by returning my brother’s remains instead of one of our 13 precious hostages who were supposed to be returned for proper burial in the Land of Israel, a blatant and contemptuous violation of the agreement signed and approved by both sides.”

The answer is that Palestinians are not allowed to live as equals in Israel, only as 2nd class citizens.

If you think Palestinians live harmoniously in Israel then you are clearly out of touch. There's a massive hatred of Arabs/Palestinians withing Israel. It's government policy and widely reported.

The comparisons between the events in Germany then and Israel now are valid.

Just as the same comparison can be made between South African Apartheid and the situation with Gaza being blockaded by Israel.

It's just a form of racial and religious discrimination and hatred. It's nothing new and it's just history repeating itself.

Any state that wants to live by interpreting a religious book as facts is doomed. Because they will always treat non-believers as less than them. To me, this has no place in a civilised society.

So yes, the whole of the middle east is going to be fucked for a long while. All because of ancient pre-science so called holy books written by blokes.

I would love to know exactly what the IDF should do when they have knowledge of a military target hiding in a hospital?

Here's a thought. They do nothing. Exactly what damage is that sole (or even multiple) military target doing to the IDF by hiding in a hospital?

But no, your only remedy is to bomb the entire hospital, destroying the infrastructure and killing or maiming every innocent person in the vicinity. The 'military target' will, of course, escape unharmed in the tunnels.

@Hiddenmnetter Would you like to comment on this article?

https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/10/1166201

Palestinians. No agency. No power. No voice. Permanent victims. Nothing any of them can do will make the slightest bit of difference to their dire situation. Its hopeless. Theyre helpless.

Might as well continue exactly the way they are. Might as well change nothing. Try nothing other than occasional spurts of violence- accepting as their due the dire consequences on their people.

Sincerely hope there's Palestinian leadership out there in the wings, just waiting for their moment, to believe things can change. And that not all of them share this helpless victim narrative.

This

And those rules are voided by the Hamas policy of the use of human shields. Hamas hide their activity in civilian populations. This is beyond any serious doubt- the presence of the tunnel networks that opens into civilian infrastructure, further as well as the Hamas penchant for blaming their own incompetence on the IDF (their own rocket attack hitting their own hospital) leaves such claims that the IDF are striking civilians fairly dubious. The evidence, if you wish to dispute it, has generally been provided by AP, Washington Post, and the like. The existence of tunnel infrastructure under hospitals and other civilian infrastructure is not reasonably deniable- Hamas use Palestinians and civilian infrastructure as human shields.

The suggestion that there aren’t Hamas operatives hiding in civilian infrastructure can’t be taken seriously. The only serious consideration is, is there action proportionate? Well- that comes down to a) the particular military value of the targets hiding in these places (I can’t speak to this) and b) what reasonable means there are for the IDF to strike these military targets without risk to their own forces- Hamas are well known for boobytrapping buildings they operate in to kill or injure and capture IDF soldiers (for whom Israel has long had a policy of being prepared to exchange thousands of Hamas prisoners for even 1 IDF prisoner- indeed the mastermind of October 7 was part of prisoner swap for 1 IDF soldier).

I think that the collateral damage caused is horrible, but I’m yet to hear anyone propose a suitable, viable alternative. I would love to know exactly what the IDF should do when they have knowledge of a military target hiding in a hospital? Should they send their soldiers in to die or be injured or captured? No matter where you sit in this conflict surely this is a nonsensical action that anyone in command would not recommend takes place?

That is a misinterpretation- Netenyahu didn’t “fund” Hamas- he opened Israeli borders so that Palestinian citizens could, on day visas, access Israel for work. This resulted in a significant increase in their average wages, something Netenyahu was of course aware would be feeding back into Hamas’ coffers, but based on the notion that if Hamas became sufficiently dependent upon the Israeli economy they would be less likely to attack.

Isnt this what everyone wanted? Instead of it being the “open air prison” there was movement across the border so that people could access the more economically developed Israel for employment opportunities? I’m not 100% up on the details, but in general I believe it was based on the “no two countries who have a McDonald’s have ever declared war on each other” theory- I.e.: that sufficient economic enmeshment makes people unwilling to risk conflict.

It obviously didn’t work- and clearly is a policy that won’t fly again, or at least for a long time. But it’s not like he was directly giving money to Hamas- rather trying to accommodate them to reach some sort of settlement (or at least that’s how I read it).

Wars do involve civilian deaths but International Law applies so wanton disregard for civilian casualties as demonstrated by dropping large bombs on civilian areas or in last nights case a family home do constitute war crimes ( particularly if, as in the case of Israel it has internationally funded access to extremely sophisticated weaponry which it chooses to use when it wants) as does the targeting of the infrastructure needed to support civilian lives, as in the hospitals, schools, bakeries and water treatment plants we have all witnessed Israel repeatedly destroying over the last two years.