Thousands of mourners turned out Thursday to see the bodies of three slain hostages laid to rest in Israel after they were returned from the Gaza Strip under a U.S.-backed ceasefire deal aimed at ending the two-year war.
In Kfar Saba, the coffin of 18-year-old Tamir Nimrodi was adorned with bright wreaths as people sobbed around it. “How does a father eulogize his son?” asked the former soldier’s father, Alon, addressing the crowd as he would his child. “I knew I was going to fight to bring you home, to bring back your smile. And I fought.”
In the Bedouin village of Sa’wa, it was the turn of Sgt. Maj. Muhammad al-Atrash, 39, whose coffin was wrapped in an Israeli flag and accompanied by soldiers. Atrash had served in the Israeli military’s Gaza Division. In a statement, the group representing families of hostages kidnapped by Hamas said it hoped Atrash’s return would bring “some measure of comfort” to his family.
Comparable scenes could not unfold in Gaza, where Israel has returned the remains of 120 Palestinians under the same deal. On Thursday, the local Health Ministry published photos of badly decomposed bodies, urging anyone who recognized them to come forward. Nearly 68,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s military operations in Gaza, according to local authorities. But thousands more remain missing, and somber crowds gathered inside central Gaza’s Nasser Hospital on Thursday in search of answers. Only four of the bodies had been identified by nightfall.
All 20 living hostages were released Monday by Hamas and its allied factions in Gaza, as nearly 2,000 Palestinian detainees and prisoners were freed from Israeli jails in return – most of them Gazans taken by Israeli forces since Oct. 7, 2023, and held without charge.
The military wing of Hamas said late Wednesday that it had handed over the final remains of deceased hostages it found amid Gaza’s vast destruction. Of the 28 bodies held there before the ceasefire took effect, nine have been returned to Israel. Retrieving the remaining bodies – buried in tunnels and beneath the rubble of bombed-out buildings – will require specialized equipment, Hamas said Thursday.
Disputes over the return of slain hostages have raged all week. Israel says Hamas is withholding bodies and violating the ceasefire agreement, but Hamas and two senior U.S. advisers say the low number of bodies returned reflects the complex conditions on the ground – a reality mediators said they expected when the deal was signed.
“You have to understand the complexity of the conditions on the ground. … The entire Gaza Strip has been pulverized,” one U.S. adviser said in a background briefing with reporters late Wednesday. “Under all that debris, there’s a lot of bodies.”
Under the agreement signed last week in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, Hamas was required to turn over all 48 living and deceased hostages within 72 hours of a partial Israeli troop withdrawal from Gaza. But a clause stipulated that a task force would be established to exchange intelligence on remains that could not be found within that time frame.
“The understanding we had with them was that we would get all of those alive. They did honor that,” said the second U.S. adviser, speaking on the condition of anonymity to freely discuss the deal’s implementation. The 72-hour deadline for all remains “would have been almost impossible,” the adviser said, “even if they knew where the bodies are.”
On Thursday, Israel’s public broadcaster Kan reported that the task force had not yet been formed and that Israeli authorities decided to prevent Egyptian and Turkish rescue teams from entering Gaza to search for the bodies. The report conflicted with what the senior U.S. advisers said – that the United States was sharing intelligence Israel has on the bodies with other mediators. They said other countries had committed significant resources and were receptive to Turkey’s offer to send an 81-person team trained in body recovery to Gaza.
The dispute between Israel and Hamas, and the uncertainty over what comes next, underscores the ceasefire’s fragility as Israel threatens to resume fighting days after President Donald Trump’s Middle East tour. During visits to Israel and Egypt, Trump celebrated what he called a “new dawn” in a region scarred by violence, including conflicts where U.S. troops or weapons played major roles.
Israeli officials have threatened to reduce aid going to Gaza, and the defense minister said Wednesday that he had ordered the Israel Defense Forces to draw up a plan to defeat Hamas “should the group refuse to implement President Trump’s plan and fighting needs to be resumed.”
Hamas handed over two more coffins to the International Committee of the Red Cross on Wednesday evening, bringing the total number of remains transferred to Israel to 10. One body handed over Tuesday was found, after DNA testing, not to have been one of the hostages. The latest two were identified as Atrash, whom the Israel Defense Forces said was killed in combat on Oct. 7, 2023, and Inbar Hayman, who was abducted from the Nova music festival.
For many in Israel, the days since the surviving hostages’ return have been bittersweet – marbled with grief as well as joy. Nimrodi’s family had not known for sure he was dead until his body was returned. Other families of deceased hostages waited for news that never came.
On social media, short videos have shown the returnees’ emotional reunions with loved ones. In Jerusalem, large posters thanked Trump for his role in making them happen. On Thursday, the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center said it had discharged two of the returned captives – Eitan Horn, 38, and Nimrod Cohen, 21 – after completing initial medical examinations.
On the road to Horn’s family home in Kfar Saba, hundreds of Israelis gathered to greet him. The youth worker, abducted alongside his brother from Kibbutz Nir Oz, was enveloped in hugs as he stepped out of a police-escorted car. The days since the hostages’ return had felt like “an emotional storm,” said Rafi Sa’ar, the city’s mayor.
“We were at a memorial service for a soldier, now at the funeral of Tamir Nimrodi, then another memorial service, and in the evening, a memorial ceremony,” he said.
Karen DeYoung in Washington and Lior Soroka in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.