By James Mackenzie
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel prepared on Saturday to receive six more hostages from Gaza in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and detainees, after accusations over the return of a misidentified body this week threatened to derail a fragile truce.
The six, the last living hostages from a group of 33 due to be freed in the first stage of the ceasefire deal agreed last month, were expected to be handed over at around 8.30 a.m. (0630 GMT), according to officials from the militant group Hamas.
Four of the hostages, Eliya Cohen, 27, Tal Shoham, 40, Omer Shem Tov, 22, and Omer Wenkert, 23, were seized by Hamas gunmen during their attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. Another two, Hisham Al-Sayed, 36, and Avera Mengistu, 39, have been held by Hamas since they entered Gaza separately under unexplained circumstances around a decade ago.
In return, Israel is expected to release 602 Palestinian prisoners and detainees held in its jails in the latest stage of an exchange that has held up despite a series of problems that have come close to sinking it on different occasions.
Late on Thursday, Israel accused Hamas of violating the ceasefire by handing over an unidentified body instead of the remains of hostage Shiri Bibas that were due to be returned along with the bodies of her two small sons.
Hamas said her remains appear to have been mixed up with other human remains recovered from the rubble after an Israeli air strike that it said killed her and her two sons in November 2023. On Friday, the group handed over another body, which Israeli forensic officials were preparing to investigate to confirm the identity.
The Bibas family, kidnapped along with their father in the October 7 attack, has been an emblem of the trauma suffered by Israel on that day and the misidentification of the remains of Shiri Bibas, as well as the staged handover of their coffins by Hamas outraged Israelis.
The Israeli military said intelligence assessments and forensic analysis of the bodies of 10-month-old Kfir Bibas and his four-year-old brother Ariel showed both had been killed deliberately by their captors.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened to make Hamas “pay the full price” for failing to return the body but he held back from walking away from the ceasefire agreement, which took effect on Jan. 19.
Hamas, which has itself accused Israel of breaching the ceasefire by blocking vital aid supplies into Gaza, nonetheless formally informed Israel of the names of the hostages to be released on Saturday in a sign the handover would go ahead.
The ceasefire has brought a pause in the fighting but prospects of a definitive end to the war remain unclear. Hamas, which killed some 1,200 people and took 251 hostages during its attack on Israel, has been at pains to demonstrate that it remains in control in Gaza despite heavy losses in the war.
The Israeli campaign killed at least 48,000 people, according to Palestinian health authorities, and reduced much of the enclave to rubble, leaving some hundreds of thousands in makeshift shelters and dependent on aid trucks.
Both sides have said they intend to start talks on a second stage, which mediators say aim to agree the return of around 60 remaining hostages and the withdrawal of Israeli troops.
But hopes of a deal have been clouded by disagreements over the future of Gaza, that have been deepened by shock across the region over U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposal to clear the enclave of Palestinians and develop it as a Riviera-style resort under U.S. control.
(Reporting by James Mackenzie; editing by Diane Craft)
