Netanyahu's office reported that the army received, via the Red Cross, a coffin containing the remains of a prisoner in Gaza, and said in a statement that "following the identification process carried out by the National Institute of Forensic Medicine (...) army representatives informed the Minnie Goddard family that his remains had been returned to Israel."
This came shortly after the Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, and the Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad movement, announced in a statement that they would hand over the body of one of the detainees in the evening.
Hamas said the remains were found on Thursday in the Moraj area, south of Khan Younis.
Netanyahu's office continued, ignoring Tel Aviv's violations of the ceasefire agreement: "Hamas must abide by the agreement and make every effort to bring back the dead hostages."
With the handover of the remains, the Palestinian factions have, since the start of the first phase of the ceasefire agreement on October 10, handed over 20 living Israeli prisoners and the remains of 27 others out of 28, according to their announcements.
However, Israel claimed that one of the remains it received did not belong to any of its prisoners, and that another set of remains was not new but rather the remains of a prisoner whose remains had previously been recovered.
Israel is conditioning the start of negotiations to launch the second phase of the agreement on receiving the remaining remains of the prisoners, while Hamas has confirmed on more than one occasion that it will take time to extract them due to the massive destruction in Gaza.
In contrast, there are 9,500 missing Palestinians killed by the Israeli army, whose bodies remain under the rubble of the Israeli war of extermination, according to the Government Media Office in Gaza.
More than 10,000 Palestinian prisoners, including children and women, are held in Israeli prisons, where they suffer torture, starvation, and medical neglect. Many of them have been killed, according to Palestinian and Israeli human rights and media reports.