This came in a statement published on Telegram following Israeli airstrikes targeting the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, in a new violation of the ceasefire agreement. The Qassam Brigades was scheduled to hand over the body of the additional Israeli captive at 8:00 PM Gaza time, after it was found earlier today in the Strip.
Al-Qassam Brigades stressed that any Israeli escalation "will hinder search and excavation operations and the recovery of bodies, which will delay the (Israeli) occupation's recovery of the bodies of its dead."
The Qassam Brigades' statement came moments after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office announced that "at the conclusion of security consultations, the military leadership had been directed to carry out immediate, powerful attacks on the Gaza Strip."
Earlier Tuesday evening, the Qassam Brigades announced its intention to hand over the body of a new Israeli prisoner found inside a tunnel in the Gaza Strip, as part of the first phase of the ceasefire agreement.
The Brigades said in a statement on Telegram: "The Al-Qassam Brigades will hand over the body of an Israeli prisoner, which was found a short while ago in a tunnel in the Gaza Strip, at 8:00 PM Gaza time."
This comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is holding a meeting to assess Hamas's handling of the issue of returning the bodies of Israeli prisoners, according to the official Israeli Broadcasting Authority.
For its part, Hamas said that Israel is pursuing a "systematic policy of obstructing search efforts" for the remains of its soldiers in Gaza, calling on mediators to intervene immediately.
The movement said in a statement: "The occupation continues to pursue a systematic policy of preventing and obstructing efforts aimed at searching for the bodies of its soldiers inside the Gaza Strip," noting that Israel has "explicitly refused the entry of joint teams from the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Palestinian resistance to several areas in the Strip to carry out this mission."
She also explained that Israel "prevents the entry of heavy machinery and equipment needed to expedite the search for bodies," and is simultaneously obstructing "the recovery of the bodies of Palestinian martyrs from under the rubble, compounding the suffering of their families."
Hamas asserted that "the occupation's allegations about the resistance's slowness in dealing with the issue are baseless and aim to mislead public opinion," warning that Israel "is seeking to fabricate false pretexts in preparation for taking new aggressive steps against our people, in a blatant violation of the ceasefire agreement."
The movement called on the mediators and guarantors of the agreement to "assume their responsibilities regarding these serious obstacles and compel the occupation to allow humanitarian missions to be carried out, free from political and aggressive considerations."
To date, Hamas has released the 20 living Israeli prisoners and handed over the bodies of 17 of the 28. Israel claims that one of the bodies handed over does not belong to any of its prisoners. Israel links the start of negotiations on the second phase of the agreement to the receipt of the remaining bodies, while the movement asserts that the search operations are complex and time-consuming due to the massive destruction in Gaza.
According to the government media office in Gaza, more than 9,500 Palestinians remain missing under the rubble of buildings destroyed by Israeli airstrikes. Meanwhile, more than 10,000 Palestinian prisoners, including women and children, are languishing in Israeli prisons, suffering "harsh conditions and systematic torture," according to human rights reports.
On Monday evening, Israel received the body of a new prisoner through the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), as part of the first phase of the ceasefire agreement that went into effect on October 10, under US President Donald Trump's plan, which ended Israel's two-year-long genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.
This genocide left 68,531 Palestinian martyrs and 170,402 wounded, most of them children and women, with the cost of reconstruction estimated by the United Nations at approximately $70 billion.
For decades, Israel has occupied Palestine and territories in Syria and Lebanon, and refuses to withdraw from these territories and establish an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, based on the pre-1967 borders.
