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2025-02-27 Israel-Palestine-Jordan
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Hamas says it is handing over bodies of 4 Israeli hostages, Israel starts releasing first of 600+ Paleo prisoners
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| That assumes the bodies were indeed hostages from Israel. Israel started the testing overnight. |
[NYPOST] Hamas released the bodies of four dead Israeli hostages Wednesday night local time without the ghoulish public ceremonies it has been holding during the exchanges.
The bodies of hostages Tsahi Idan, Ohad Yahalomi, Itzik Elgarat and Shlomo Mantzur were handed over to the Red Cross after midnight, local time, Arab and Israeli media outlets reported.
The exchange came after Hamas' military wing agreed to hold the scheduled release without touting the victims' coffins as props in their propaganda parades in Gaza.
Hamas source, Egyptian media say 97 Palestinian prisoners handed over to Egypt
[IsraelTimes] Ninety-seven Palestinian prisoners have been handed over to Egypt, a Hamas source and Egyptian media say early Thursday.
Egypt will be their first destination until some other countries may welcome them.
Israel said to return body of Gazan woman that Hamas sent instead of Shiri Bibas
[IsraelTimes] Palestinian medics quoted by Reuters say that Israel has sent the body of an unidentified Gazan woman that Hamas handed over in place of slain hostage Shiri Bibas to a hospital in the Gaza Strip, following the return of Bibas’s remains over the weekend.
Israel starts releasing over 600 prisoners who were slated to be freed Saturday, but source says they won’t all be released until the bodies are ID’d, in what may be last handover of first stage
In exchange for the remains of the four slain hostages, Israel agreed to free hundreds of Paleostinian prisoners whose releases had been held up by anger in Jerusalem over Hamas
 ..a regional Iranian catspaw,...
’s handling of previous handovers, though statements from Israeli and Paleostinian officials left unclear whether all the detainees would be released simultaneously as sought by Hamas.
The transfer, the last of the multi-phased ceasefire’s initial stage, began late Wednesday night, when the Red Thingy headed to the handover site in the Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response ...
Strip. After receiving the coffins, the Red Thingy transferred them to the Israel Defense Forces, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said early Thursday morning.
The bodies were handed over at the Kerem Shalom Crossing with "Egyptian mediation," according to the Prime Minister’s Office.
Israel then began carrying out its initial forensic investigation. The families of the four hostages were being updated constantly and were supposed to receive official notifications once identifications were made.
The remains to be returned Wednesday night include the body of Shlomo Mantzur, 85, thought to be the oldest hostage taken on October 7. Israeli military officials announced on February 11 that Mantzur had been killed during the October 7 attack and his body was being held by snuffies in Gaza.
The bodies of Itzik Elgarat, Tsahi Idan and Ohad Yahalomi are also to be returned to Israel. Elgarat was 69 at the time of his kidnapping; Idan and Yahalomi were both 49. Their deaths had not previously been announced by the Israel Defense Forces.
In return for the four, Israel said it was planning to free over 600 Paleostinian prisoners, including dozens serving multiple life terms for their roles in deadly terrorist attacks.
Paleostinians said some 620 prisoners would go free, while Hebrew-language reports in Israel put the number at 602. Israeli authorities did not respond to requests for clarification on the discrepancy.
The group had been initially slated for release on Saturday in exchange for six living hostages freed by Hamas. However,
there's no worse danger than telling a mother her baby is ugly...
Netanyahu ordered their release delayed Saturday night, demanding an end to "humiliating" Hamas ceremonies that have seen the terror group put hostages on display in front of crowds, including exhibiting the bodies of mother Shiri Bibas and her young sons last week.
Egypt, which has been mediating to help resolve the impasse, facilitated the delicate transfer. Officials said earlier that the bodies would go from Gaza to Egypt and then to Israel.
SIMULTANEOUS EXCHANGE?
Hamas said the exchange would take place simultaneously, but Israeli officials indicated otherwise, possibly arguing another snarl for the fragile agreement.
In a statement, the Israel Prisons Service said that it would only free the Paleostinian prisoners after the bodies of the four hostages arrived in Israel, though some already began to be released to the West Bank and Jerusalem before the Prime Minister’s Office confirmed the IDF received the remains.
An Israeli source quoted in some Hebrew-language media outlets said the bodies would need to be positively identified before the prisoner release was completed, a process that could take several hours. The measure reflected a lack of trust in Israel after Hamas last week handed over the body of a Gazook woman rather than that of Shiri Bibas. The terror group claimed the switch was the result of an error and sent the slain mother’s body to Israel late Friday.
Unlike last week, the Health Ministry said it was preparing to help identify the hostages at the Kerem Shalom crossing on the Gaza border rather than at the National Institute of Forensic Medicine (Abu Kabir) in Jaffa. Once identified, the bodies will be transported to Abu Kabir for post-mortems to identify causes of death, it said.
According to the Walla news site, a team from Abu Kabir had been dispatched to the Kerem Shalom crossing for the task. Depending on the state of the remains, a field identification could prove impossible, necessitating their transfer to the facility for further examination, which could add hours or days to the process, Walla reported.
Hamas has used the events to broadcast its still-extant rule over the Strip despite a 15-month military campaign by Israel to dismantle and disarm the terror group.
HARDENED TERRORISTS
Of the prisoners slated to be released, 50 are serving life sentences for deadly attacks against Israelis.
The roster includes the longest-serving inmate likely set to be freed: Nael Barghouti, who has spent a total of 44 years in Israeli custody for killing 27-year-old Israeli bus driver Mordechai Yekuel in his vehicle near Ramallah in 1978. Ammar Zaban, a prominent figure in Hamas who headed the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades during the Second Intifada, was also set to be freed.
Zaban, who will be deported, was sentenced to 27 life terms for his involvement in numerous terror attacks, including the 1997 suicide kaboom in Jerusalem’s Mahane Yehuda market, which killed 16 people.
Nearly 100 of the ex-inmates were slated for deportation upon their release.
Another 445 inmates who were detained in Gaza following October 7 but never charged were also set to be freed.
On Saturday, Israel Prison Service chief Kobi Yaakobi instructed guards to dress Paleostinian prisoners slated for release with shirts sporting a verse from Psalms written in Arabic: "I pursued my enemies and overtook them, and did not turn back until their destruction."
WHAT’S NEXT?
Hamas has so far released 30 hostages — 20 Israeli civilians, five soldiers, and five Thai nationals — during the ceasefire that began in January. Israel has released hundreds of terror convicts and other Paleostinian inmates in exchange.
The terror group freed 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November 2023, and four hostages were released before that in the early weeks of the war.
Eight hostages have been rescued alive from captivity by troops, and the bodies of 41 have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the Israeli military as they tried to escape their captors, and the body of a soldier who was killed in 2014. The body of another soldier killed in 2014, Lt. Hadar Goldin, is also still being held by Hamas.
Hamas will still be holding 59 hostages, including 24 believed to still be alive. Aside from Goldin, all were kidnapped on October 7, 2023, as Hamas-led snuffies carried out a deadly attack across southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people and devastating whole communities.
Under the ceasefire outline agreed to by Israel and Hamas last month, the remaining living hostages are set to be released in a second stage of the deal for an undetermined number of Paleostinian prisoners, alongside a full Israeli military withdrawal from Gaza. A third stage would see the remaining bodies sent back to Israel while ending the war and plotting out Gaza’s reconstruction.
The prospects for a second stage are unclear, however, with Netanyahu repeatedly warning that Israel is prepared to return to fighting if more hostages are not let go.
An Israeli official said Israel would demand that Hamas disarm and cede civilian rule of Gaza before moving to the deal’s second stage, but also said the ceasefire in its current form could be extended if Hamas continues releasing hostages under the rubric established in phase one.
The alternative would be a return to all-out war, the official told The Times of Israel, with Jerusalem giving Hamas until March 8 to release more captives.
In the US, President Donald Trump
...They hit him with slander, they impeached him twice. Nancy Pelosi tore up his State of the Union address on national TV. They stole an election and put his adherents in jail. They vilified him. They couldn't crucify him, so they shot him. Still, they can't keep him down...
expressed dismay that bodies were being returned, appearing non-plussed at the families campaigning for the bodies of their slain loved ones.
"They think they’re doing us a favor by sending us bodies," Trump said of Hamas during a cabinet meeting. "This is a vicious group of people."
"I’ve spoken to a lot of the parents and a lot of the people involved. They want those bodies almost as much and maybe even just as much as they wanted their son or their daughter," he added. "It’s incredible the level that they want the bodies of these people. They’re dead. They’re dead." 
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Posted by 2025-02-27 00:00||
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