Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu ordered the army to carry out ‘massive raids’ on the Strip, accusing Hamas of violating the agreements. In particular, according to the IDF, yesterday afternoon Hamas killed an Israeli soldier in the Rafah area. And according to local hospital sources, 65 people have died in Israeli attacks on Palestinian territory. US President Donald Trump said “nothing” would jeopardize the ceasefire in Gaza, but added that Israel “must react” if its soldiers are killed.
Yesterday:
The Israeli government, after the delivery of the hostage’s remains, had denounced a macabre “staging”, speaking of yet another violation by the Islamist faction. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately called an emergency meeting to discuss the response, also in the wake of the clashes in Rafah. And at the end his office announced that “following security consultations, the Prime Minister ordered the army to immediately carry out powerful attacks in the Gaza Strip”.
A very harsh response, perhaps the harshest among the many options on the table which also include the possibility of an extension of the Yellow Line, the limit behind which the IDF had withdrawn based on the maps of the Trump plan. Netanyahu, who according to what an Israeli official told journalist Barak Ravid had underlined the need for coordination with the United States to determine which measures to adopt, thus appears to have succumbed to internal pressure from his government’s hawks. And to those of the hostages’ families.
“The fact that Hamas continues to play and does not immediately transfer the bodies of all our fallen soldiers is in itself proof that the terrorist organization is still standing. It’s time to break those legs once and for all,” thundered far-right minister Itamar Ben Gvir. “We must destroy it completely. Mr Prime Minister, enough with the hesitations: give the order”, invoked the head of National Security. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich also accused Hamas of “mocking Israeli citizens and cruelly and cynically playing with the emotions of the families of the fallen hostages.” And on
Hamas has meanwhile launched its retaliation, stopping the announced delivery, scheduled for this evening, of the body of another kidnapped person, accusing the enemy of having violated the terms of the agreement “first”, breaking the already fragile truce. Truce that the Trump administration continues to strongly support, dismissing the events of the day as skirmishes: “The ceasefire is holding. I believe that peace in the Middle East will resist despite the skirmishes”, commented Vice President JD Vance.
The remains, returned on Monday evening as the sixteenth hostage returned, later turned out to be those of Ofir Tzarfati, kidnapped on 7 October 2023 and died in captivity, whose body had already been recovered by the IDF partly in December of the same year and partly in March 2024. A heartbreak for the family who, he said, is forced to “reopen his tomb for the third time”. The delivery of Tzarfati’s remains also outraged Israel for having staged its discovery, also deceiving the Red Cross. Local media released video taken by an army drone in which a group of men are seen dragging the body from a building to a hole dug in the ground in the Shejaiya neighborhood of Gaza City. The three who appear hooded then cover the body with earth, first with shovels and then an excavator, and then pretend to discover it for the first time in front of the Red Cross called to recover it.