As Gaza ceasefire hinges on returning remains, Waltz says U.S. to help find the missing, including Americans
Hamas returned the bodies of two more deceased Israeli hostages Wednesday night, bringing the total number returned to nine. But as video continued to emerge showing the staggering scale of destruction in Gaza, the group said it couldn’t hand over any more remains without specialized equipment to find and retrieve the bodies.
Israeli soldier Capt. Daniel Peretz was among the former hostages laid to rest in solemn ceremonies on Wednesday after his family finally received his body, which was held in Gaza for over two years. Peretz was killed fighting Hamas during the attack on Oct. 7, 2023. For his family, the day brought fresh pain.
“It’s a new truth I have to face,” said his sister Adina Peretz. “It’s proof, proof, that you are really gone.”
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum, which represents Israeli hostage families, said this week that the peace process should not move forward until all the bodies are returned.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, in a social media post on Monday, called Hamas’ initial handover of only four bodies “a violation of the agreement,” adding that “any delay or deliberate avoidance will be considered a gross violation of the agreement and will be responded to accordingly.”
But senior U.S. advisers speaking to reporters on Wednesday in Washington urged patience, citing the difficulties in retrieving the remains. They said U.S. officials were not at a point where they believed the peace agreement had been violated by either side.
“Many of the Hamas commanders who are responsible for burying these Israeli hostages are no longer alive,” Israeli hostage negotiator Gershon Baskin told CBS News on Wednesday. “They were killed by the Israelis.”
Given that fact, and the perilous conditions inside the Palestinian territory, where there are unexploded bombs amid the piles of debris, Baskin said “some of the deceased hostages may never be found, and that’s part of the reality, but we have to make sure that Hamas is doing everything possible to do it.”
President Trump weighed in on the matter himself on Wednesday, telling reporters the recovery efforts — which international search and rescue experts are expected to join at some point — were “a gruesome process.”
“I almost hate to talk about it,” said Mr. Trump. “But they’re digging. They’re actually digging, areas where they’re digging, and they’re finding a lot of bodies. Then they have to separate the bodies.”
Waltz, President Trump’s former National Security Advisor and the current U.N. ambassador, noted Thursday on Fox News that there were still two American nationals among the deceased hostages in Gaza.
“We will do everything to get them out,” Walz said, adding that there was “an entire task force” including senior American officials, along with 200 U.S. troops, in the region “to help with this and with the aid facilitation, and the Israelis are absolutely focused on it. So, they need heavy equipment. They need specialized gear. But we have to also understand that if this ceasefire falls apart, the fighting starts, that’s going to make it that much harder to find these loved ones and get them out.”
The remains of American-Israeli nationals Itay Chen and Omer Neutra, both of whom were members of the Israel Defense Forces, have yet to be returned from Gaza.
Turkey has offered its assistance in locating and retrieving the remains of the hostages still in Gaza, given the country’s extensive expertise after recent catastrophic earthquakes. No firm plans for such a deployment, from Turkey or any other nation, have been confirmed, but Turkish media said 81 personnel from that country alone could be sent to the region, including ten-person specialist search and rescue units.
Israel said it would return the bodies of 15 Palestinians in exchange for the remains of every hostage handed back by Hamas as part of the peace deal, and the Red Cross has been transferring remains of Palestinians back to Gaza in recent days. But those returns, too, have been mired in controversy.
“We saw with our own eyes clear signs of torture and execution,” Sameh Hamad, a member of a commission tasked with receiving the bodies at a hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis, told The Associated Press. “Their hands and feet were cuffed, their eyes blindfolded.”
Hamas said in a statement on Thursday that “horrifying scenes seen on the bodies” handed over by Israel included “signs of torture, mutilation, and field executions.”
The group called on human rights organizations and the United Nations “to document these atrocious crimes, to open an urgent and comprehensive investigation, and to bring the leaders of the occupation to trial before the competent international courts.”
Former Israeli hostages have also spoken of torture at the hands of their Hamas captors in Gaza, including Keith Siegel, who was held for over a year.
He told CBS‘ 60 Minutes in March that he witnessed the sexual assault of other hostages by Hamas militants, and that he was personally beaten, psychologically tortured and humiliated by his captors.
The Israeli military responded Friday to a CBS News request for comment on the allegations that Palestinian prisoners were tortured, saying that it “operates strictly in accordance with international law, in stark contrast to the murderous terror organization Hamas, which slaughtered civilians, desecrated bodies, and even glorified their actions by publishing their atrocities online.”
The statement added that all of the bodies returned to Gaza thus far were those of “combatants within the Gaza Strip, and not of detainees taken alive to Israel and executed, as mentioned in the article. The IDF did not tie any bodies prior to their release to the Strip.”