Mr Netanyahu issued the order during a meeting with defence minister Israel Katz and the heads of the Shin Bet, the domestic security agency, and the Mossad (foreign intelligence), the office said. <\/p>\n
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) reported that Palestinian militants fired RPGs and sniper rounds at troops operating in the Rafah area of southern Gaza. In response, the IDF said it carried out a series of air strikes on \u201cterror targets\u201d in the enclave.<\/p>\n
A senior Hamas official said the Palestinian militant group remains committed to the ceasefire, which he accused Israel of repeatedly violating.<\/p>\n
Israel<\/a> identified the body of a deceased hostage on Sunday, after Hamas handed over two bodies<\/a> of what the militant group said were deceased hostages to the Red Cross late on Saturday.<\/p>\n Mr Netanyahu said the body was identified as Ronen Engel. The second body was still undergoing identification at Israel\u2019s National Institute of Forensic Medicine.<\/p>\n Mr Engel (54) was killed during the October 7th attack on Kibbutz Nir Oz on the Gaza border. His wife, Karina, and two of his three children were kidnapped and released in a ceasefire in November 2023.<\/p>\n Elsewhere, Israel threatened to keep the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt closed \u201cuntil further notice\u201d.<\/p>\n The statement by Mr Netanyahu\u2019s office said reopening Rafah would depend on how Hamas fulfilled its ceasefire role of returning the remains of all 28 deceased hostages.<\/p>\n Hamas has handed over the remains of 11 identified hostages. Israel has returned the bodies of 135 Palestinians to Gaza.<\/p>\n The handover of remains is among key points \u2013 along with aid deliveries into Gaza and the devastated territory\u2019s future \u2013 in the ceasefire process meant to end two years of war.<\/p>\n The Rafah crossing is the only one that was not controlled by Israel before the war. It has been closed since May 2024, when Israel took control of the Gaza side.<\/p>\n A fully reopened crossing would make it easier for Palestinians to seek medical treatment, travel or visit family in Egypt, home to tens of thousands of Palestinians.<\/p>\n Hamas said discussions were under way with mediators on arrangements for launching negotiations on the second phase of Donald Trump\u2019s plan to end the war in Gaza.<\/p>\n Hazem Kassem, a spokesman for Hamas, said in a statement late on Saturday that the second phase negotiations \u201crequire national consensus\u201d.<\/p>\n He said Hamas had begun discussions to solidify their positions on the issues but did not provide further details.<\/p>\n According to Mr Trump\u2019s plan, the second phase of negotiations include disarming Hamas and the establishment of an international-backed authority to run the embattled Gaza Strip.<\/p>\n Mr Kassem reiterated that the group would not be part of the ruling authority in a postwar Gaza. Hamas-run government bodies in the Gaza Strip are running day-to-day affairs to avoid a power vacuum, he said.<\/p>\n Mr Kassem called for a prompt establishment of the Community Support Committee, a body of Palestinian technocrats, to run the day-to-day affairs.<\/p>\n The US state department said on Saturday that it had credible reports of an imminent planned attack by Hamas against residents of Gaza.<\/p>\n \u201cThis planned attack against Palestinian civilians would constitute a direct and grave violation of the ceasefire agreement and undermine the significant progress achieved through mediation efforts,\u201d it said in a statement.<\/p>\n There was no immediate Hamas comment on the state department statement, but the interior ministry, which is part of the Hamas-run government, has said its forces were working to restore law and order across areas Israel\u2019s military withdrew from following the ceasefire.<\/p>\n Hamas-led fighters clashed with at least two armed groups in eastern Gaza City that Hamas alleges are involved in looting aid and collaborating with Israel. They executed a handful of suspects in public, in widely condemned street killings. <\/p>\n Israel\u2019s war in Gaza has killed more than 68,000 Palestinians, according to the health ministry, which is part of the Hamas-run government in the territory. Its figures are seen as a reliable estimate of wartime deaths by UN agencies and many independent experts. <\/p>\n Israel has disputed them without providing its own toll.<\/p>\n Thousands more people are missing, according to the Red Cross.<\/p>\n Hamas-led militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted 251 people in the attack on southern Israel that sparked the war on October 7th, 2023. \u2013 AP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Israeli military said on Sunday that air force fighter jets carried out air strikes in Gaza\u2019s Rafah…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":132024,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,13,14,3761,69,6,71,3857,11,12,15,16,5,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-132023","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-featured-news","11":"tag-featurednews","12":"tag-gaza-strip","13":"tag-hamas","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-israel","16":"tag-israel-hamas-conflict","17":"tag-latest-news","18":"tag-latestnews","19":"tag-main-news","20":"tag-mainnews","21":"tag-news","22":"tag-top-stories","23":"tag-topstories","24":"tag-world","25":"tag-world-news","26":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Ronen](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/S4CFIREJFXNBXDTCY3X7YXJ25M.jpg\")
Ronen Engel was killed during the October 7th attack on Kibbutz Nir Oz on the Gaza border. Photograph: Hostages Family Forum via AP <\/p>\n![\"Palestinians](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/45FQICYIYZGYA5NGPYJI45YVNQ.jpg\")
Palestinians use an excavator, reportedly searching for bodies in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip. Photograph: ABDOLRAHMAN RASHAD\/Middle East Images\/AFP via Getty Images <\/p>\n