A casket handed over by Hamas on Monday night to Israel contained the partial remains of Ofir Tzarfati, a hostage whose body was recovered by the military in early December 2023, Israeli officials said.
The return of the remains means that Hamas did not return the body of one of the 13 deceased hostages still held in Gaza. Israel has said Hamas has access to many of the remaining bodies and is dragging its feet in returning them, which it is required to do under the terms of the US-backed ceasefire agreement.
Voices from across the political spectrum have called on Israel to halt or pause its own commitments under the agreement in response, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was set to convene an emergency meeting on Tuesday to discuss possible Israeli reactions.
Tzarfati was kidnapped from the Nova music festival during the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack, where he was celebrating his 27th birthday. He was declared dead the following month, and his body was recovered by the IDF in the Gaza Strip on December 1 and brought back to Israel for burial.
Tzarfati’s family was notified by military representatives on Tuesday morning that additional remains of his body were returned by Hamas.
The transfer of the remains Monday night had already sparked controversy, with military sources saying Hamas staged its “discovery” in eastern Gaza City by digging a hole in the area, extracting the remains from a nearby building, placing them in the hole, then pretending to “uncover” them for the first time in front of the Red Cross.
According to IDF sources, the entire incident was filmed by a military drone. The IDF has not yet released the footage, but Tzarfati’s family said they had viewed the video, lamenting “a wound that constantly reopens.”
“Once again, deception has been inflicted upon our family as we try to heal,” Tzarfati’s family said in a statement. “This morning we were shown video footage of our beloved son’s remains being removed, buried, and handed over to the Red Cross — an abhorrent manipulation designed to sabotage the deal and abandon the effort to bring all the hostages home.”
Heavy machinery amid a purported operation to recover the body of a hostage in the al-Tuffah neighborhood of Gaza City on October 27, 2025 (Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
The Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement that “this is a clear violation of the agreement” by Hamas, as it is obligated to return the bodies of the 13 deceased captives still held in Gaza.
Netanyahu was set to hold a security assessment with top defense officials in the afternoon to “discuss Israel’s steps in response to the violations,” the PMO added.
In one potential response, Israel is considering moving the so-called Yellow Line that divides Gaza in two, Hebrew media reported, with the IDF taking control of more territory as a way of pressuring Hamas to hand over the bodies of additional hostages. The US is open to the proposal, according to Channel 12.
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum, which has said Israel should pause the US-backed peace deal until Hamas returns the bodies of deceased captives, demanded a meeting with Netanyahu in light of Tuesday’s news, accusing Hamas of violating the truce and calling on Israel to “act decisively.”
“Hamas’s repeated violations and the IDF’s documentation prove what we have known and stated clearly and unequivocally: Hamas knows the location of the hostages and continues to act with contempt, deceiving the United States and mediators while dishonoring our loved ones,” the group said in a statement. “The Israeli government cannot and must not ignore this, and must act decisively against these violations.”
Ruby Chen, the father of slain American-Israeli hostage soldier Itay Chen whose body has yet to be returned from Gaza, told the Ynet news outlet on Tuesday, “This agreement isn’t good, that’s the lesson. Hamas has no incentive to transfer all the slain hostages to Israel.”
“What is the government of Israel doing right now?” he demanded. “They should dedicate their energy and their thought to what we’ll do to change the equation. We shouldn’t lose this window of opportunity.”
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir attends a National Security Committee meeting at the Knesset in Jerusalem on October 27, 2025. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
Far-right ministers urged Netanyahu to destroy Hamas, in a return to the two-year war.
“The fact that Hamas continues to play games and does not immediately transfer all the bodies of our fallen is in itself evidence that the terror organization is still standing,” National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir posted on X. “Now we don’t need to ‘exact a price from Hamas’ for the violations. We need to exact from it its very existence, and destroy it completely, once and for all — in accordance with the central goal defined for the War of Revival.”
Writing to Netanyahu, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich demanded an urgent meeting of the security cabinet to discuss “forceful responses” to Hamas’s violations of the first phase of the ceasefire, including continued steps toward the terror group’s destruction.
“Against the backdrop of Hamas’s repeated violations of the ceasefire terms and the first stage of President Trump’s plan, and against the backdrop of the lack of progress in its dismantling and the demilitarization of Gaza, I request that you urgently convene the security cabinet today for a discussion in order to formulate a package of forceful and determined responses, and to ensure our adherence to the central objective of the war: the destruction of Hamas and the removal of the threat emanating from Gaza toward the citizens of Israel,” Smotrich wrote.
Illustrative: Palestinian security prisoners gesture from inside a bus after being released from Ofer Prison in the West Bank on October 13, 2025, in exchange for hostages held in Gaza since the October 7 attacks. (HAZEM BADER / AFP)
On X, Smotrich suggested that, as a penalty for the ceasefire violations, Israel rearrest “all of the terrorists released to [the West Bank] as part of the hostage deal.”
Under the agreement, Israel released 250 life-sentence prisoners, as well as some 1,700 Gazans detained following the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack that launched the war — some to the West Bank, some to Gaza, and some to other countries.
Former prime minister Naftali Bennett, who is considered the most credible rival to Netanyahu in elections due next year, also called for the destruction of Hamas.
“Hamas is a cancer. Hamas must be destroyed,” he said in a statement.
