A Red Cross official confirmed that its personnel joined Hamas officials into zones of the Gaza Strip currently controlled by Israeli military control to support the hunt for the remains of Israeli hostages.
Under the truce negotiated by the United States, which began on October 10, Hamas is required to hand over the bodies of all captives as soon as possible. As a reciprocal measure, the Israeli government has agreed to transfer the remains of 15 Palestinians for each Israeli.
Hamas has so far handed back the bodies of fifteen of those held captive but zero in the past five days, as a portion of those remains are thought to be in locations past the ceasefire boundary designating the temporary truce line.
“At the request of the involved sides, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) accompanied a participant in the hostilities as the party searched for the remains of the deceased past the military-established ‘yellow boundary’,” said a spokesperson for the organization.
She continued: “The parties to the hostilities established the procedures of the mission and entrusted the Red Cross to act as a impartial mediator. The ICRC was not involved in the discussions.”
She further explained: “Our team was did not participate in the search for the deceased nor does it engage in the physical recovery of remains.”
According to global legal norms, it is the duty of the parties engaged in a conflict to search for, collect, and recover human remains.
On Saturday, the US president delivered a 48-hour demand to the militant group. “Hamas is going to have to start handing over the bodies of the deceased hostages, including two Americans, promptly, or the other countries involved in this significant truce will intervene,” he wrote on his online channel.
As the 48-hour deadline approached, Hamas, accompanied by the ICRC, teamed up with Egyptian teams, who were authorised by Israel to search for bodies beyond the line indicating the withdrawal of troops inside Gaza. An official representative said the delegation would use heavy machinery and trucks in the search.
The news was corroborated by an unnamed Israeli official, who told local press that Hamas representatives had been permitted to access areas of Gaza under military authority to search for the remains of hostages, alongside Egypt’s and Red Cross personnel.
“To achieve this goal, representatives were allowed to cross the yellow line,” the source was quoted as stating.
Video published by a regional network appeared to show individuals of a Hamas unit – belonging to the group’s armed faction tasked with guarding captives – accompanying a humanitarian transport in a coastal area close to a southern city, which lies outside Israeli military control.
Efforts to locate for the remains of Israeli hostages has become one of the most sensitive issues in the truce agreed between the two sides. Yet, the attempt to locate the bodies has been challenging from the beginning, given the existence of an approximate enormous amount of rubble across the strip, where, according to health officials, at least 10,000 residents are recorded as unaccounted for, buried under the rubble.
The group has stated it does not know the exact whereabouts of all the remains, saying it has lost contact with several of its teams that had been detaining the captives and were reportedly eliminated during Israeli bombardments.
However, an Israeli government spokesperson claimed that the organization was aware of the locations of the bodies. “If Hamas made more of an effort, they would be able to recover the bodies of our hostages,” the spokesperson said.
While the US president has conceded that some of the remains are hard to access, he said that “the rest they can hand over now and, for some reason, they are not.”
“This could be related to the surrender of weapons of the group,” he added.
Washington has said it has received guarantees from Hamas that the group will surrender its arms, though no clear timeline has been established. The militant organisation remains reluctant to surrender its arms without solid guarantees about the fate of its members.
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