IDF recovers bodies of five Israeli hostages as deal still distant

The hostages’ bodies were retrieved from an unguarded tunnel in Khan Younis in southern Gaza, according to Israeli radio. The bodies recovered were those of Maya Goren, 56, a kindergarten teacher, and four soldiers: Oren Goldin, Tomer Ahimas, Kiril Brodski and Ravid Aryeh Katz, according to the IDF statement.

News about the recovery of the bodies emerged around the time Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was addressing Congress and promoting his efforts to free the hostages. In his speech Wednesday, he promised their families that he “will not rest until all their loved ones are home,” as protests against him continued outside the U.S. Capitol.

In Israel, families of hostages reacted negatively to the news about the latest setbacks in the hostage talks, particularly the delay of the negotiating team’s trip to Qatar, and blamed Netanyahu.

“For two weeks, the Prime Minister has refrained from responding to the mediators’ inquiries regarding the implementation of the deal,” the Hostages Families Forum Headquarters said in a statement. “It has now become apparent that the information provided to the hostages’ families did not accurately reflect the situation’s reality.”

The group accused Netanyahu and the negotiating team of “a deliberate sabotage of the chance to bring our loved ones back,” and it demanded to know who was obstructing the hostage deal and why.

Talks around the hostage negotiations hit a new snag last week in Doha, according to a diplomat briefed on the talks who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive diplomatic effort.

After the meeting, Israeli negotiators submitted new demands, including the refusal to withdraw from Gaza’s border with Egypt and restrictions on the ability for civilians to return to Gaza’s north, according to the diplomat.

Granting civilians permission to return to northern Gaza has been a key Hamas demand in the talks for months, and previous reports from the negotiations suggested the issue had largely been agreed to. Israeli forces took over Gaza’s border with Egypt in May and say the area was used by Hamas to smuggle weapons and supplies into Gaza.

While Netanyahu’s speech received numerous standing ovations from lawmakers who attended, much of the reaction in the Israeli press was critical and contrasted the address with the discovery of the hostages’ corpses.

“While Netanyahu was speaking in Congress, the IDF was working to identify the bodies of dead hostages,” columnist Nahum Barnea wrote in the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper. “One world in Washington, another world in Israel.”

The daily Maariv quoted Einav Zangauker, whose son Matan is being held hostage, as saying that Netanyahu was delaying the deal “for personal reasons.”

“Even if we receive news of more hostages dying in tunnels, he will continue with his public relations campaign in the United States and will continue to drag his feet,” she said.

A Netanyahu ally, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, hit back at the media for what he called its overly negative portrayal of the prime minister’s “impressive” speech and accused commentators of trying to weaken the country.

“The bitter band of sourpusses in [the media] has illustrated once again the enormity of its disconnect from Israeli experience and is doing everything to ruin the celebration,” he wrote on Facebook.

Family and friends of Goren, the kindergarten teacher whose body was taken from Kibbutz Nir Oz, expressed relief that her body had been recovered. She had already been declared dead in December.

“Mom was finally laid to rest — after more than nine months, her journey has ended,” her family said in a statement shared on a WhatsApp forum that also thanked the security forces that brought her body back. “Your abandonment has at last ended.” Around a quarter of residents of the kibbutz were reported killed or missing after the attack, and about half of the houses were destroyed.

More than 250 hostages were taken by Hamas and its allies on Oct. 7. Israelis said at least 111 remain in Gaza and of those at least 72 are believed to still be alive.

Talks to release hostages and end the war in Gaza have been stalled for months, with each side blaming the other for the lack of progress. At the core of the deadlock is the issue of how the war in Gaza will end. Hamas has demanded that the release of hostages be followed by the withdrawal of Israeli forces and a permanent cease-fire. Netanyahu has vowed to completely destroy Hamas.

For its part, Hamas also accused Netanyahu of obstructing negotiations.

“He is the one who thwarted all efforts,” the group said, blasting Netanyahu’s claim that efforts to reach an agreement have intensified and calling it “a complete lie.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin met Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the Kremlin on Thursday. “Considering all the events that are taking place in the world as a whole and in the Eurasian region today, our meeting today seems very important to discuss all the details of the development of these events,” Assad told Putin through a Russian interpreter.

Many Palestinian families are continually forced to seek new places of refuge inside the Gaza Strip, where there is no safe place, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees said Thursday morning. “Children are crying and screaming. Everybody is in this horrible position once again. It keeps happening over and over and over,” said Louise Wateridge, a spokeswoman for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency in Gaza. “They are forced from place to place, promised safety where there is none.”

At least 39,175 people have been killed and 90,403 injured in Gaza since the war started, the Gaza Health Ministry said Wednesday. It does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says the majority of the dead are women and children. Israel estimates that about 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, including more than 300 soldiers, and it says 326 soldiers have been killed since the start of its military operations in Gaza.