Israel Recovers the Bodies of Three Hostages Taken on Oct. 7 (2024)

The dead hostages had been abducted from a music festival on Oct. 7.

The recovery of the remains highlighted the growing anxiety among relatives of hostages over how many of their loves ones are still alive after seven months of war in Gaza. A growing number of Israelis have criticized the Netanyahu government for doing too little to reach a deal with Hamas to secure the release of the remaining captives.

Roughly 125 living and dead hostages abducted on Oct. 7 remain in Gaza, including several U.S. citizens, according to the Israeli authorities. Israel and Hamas have held indirect negotiations in an attempt to reach a deal that would free at least some hostages in exchange for a cease-fire.

In Washington on Friday, John F. Kirby, a White House spokesman, said there was no new information about the well being or whereabouts of the handful of Americans who were taken on Oct. 7.

Ms. Louk, a 23-year-old German-Israeli citizen, became a symbol of the brutality of the devastating attack. Shortly after Oct. 7, Hamas released a video of a woman lying face down, mostly naked, in the back of a pickup truck in Gaza. Based on the dreadlocks and tattoos, Ms. Louk’s mother said she believed it was her daughter.

In late October, Ms. Louk’s family said the Israeli authorities had confirmed she had been killed. Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, publicly mourned her death, saying at the time that it “shows the full barbarity behind the Hamas attack — who must be held accountable.”

Ms. Buskila, who was 27 when she was abducted, called her family on the morning of the attack, whispering to them that she was “surrounded by terrorists,” her uncle, Shimon Atiyas, told Israeli television in late October. “She told me: ‘Shimon, I’m dying, I love you.’ After that, we didn’t get any information about her fate.”

Mr. Gelernter, who went by the nickname Itzik, was a resident of central Israel who was 56 on Oct. 7. His son, Asaf, described him in an interview with Israeli news media in February as a devoted father and grandfather who was widely beloved. “He was young at heart,” Asaf Gelernter said. He added, “He enjoyed life, he loved life.”

In a statement, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel mourned the “terrible loss” of the three hostages. “We will return all of our hostages, the living and the deceased alike,” Mr. Netanyahu said.

A senior Hamas official, Izzat Al-Rishq, declined to confirm whether the hostages had indeed been recovered by Israel, but said on the Telegram messaging app, “Without an exchange that dignifies our people and our resistance, the enemy will only receive its prisoners as lifeless corpses.”

Israeli soldiers and intelligence officers recovered the bodies of the hostages during a mission based on intelligence obtained from interrogating detained Palestinian militants, the Israeli military said in a statement.

For months, Israel and Hamas have been negotiating indirectly through mediators over a cease-fire deal that would secure the release of the remaining hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israel. In late November, 105 hostages were freed during a weeklong truce between the two sides.

Just two weeks ago, officials familiar with the talks voiced hope that a deal could be reached soon. But the negotiations have stalled, and the two sides remain far apart on key issues, including Israel’s insistence that it still plans to carry out a massive assault on the southern city of Rafah.

“The return of their bodies is a painful and stark reminder that we must swiftly bring back all our brothers and sisters from their cruel captivity — the living for rehabilitation, and the murdered to a proper burial,” said the Hostage Families Forum Headquarters, a group representing many relatives of those held captive.

Katie Rogers contributed from Washington.

Diplomats call on Israel to take ‘urgent action’ to protect Gazans, and other news.

American medical volunteers leave Gaza after being trapped by the Rafah incursion.

Three American doctors with the Palestinian American Medical Association stayed behind to keep working, according to Dr. Mustafa Musleh, president of the group. Other volunteers with the organization remained because only those with American citizenship had been granted permission to leave.

“We are happy for the volunteers who made it back,” Dr. Musleh said, but he expressed frustration with the process and with the fact that new volunteers had not been allowed in, adding that a team of 11 doctors was waiting in Cairo for permission to enter. “The emergency is not only to get the volunteers out, but to help the people who are suffering.”

Last week, Israeli forces launched an attack on Rafah, where more than a million displaced people had been sheltering.They closed the Rafah crossing with Egypt, a vital entry point for humanitarian aid.

Additionally, Israel shut down the Kerem Shalom crossing but reopened it on Wednesday.

The Rafah attack has also prevented dozens of wounded and ill Palestinians from reaching Egypt to receive medical treatment, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

On Friday morning at the European General Hospital, the group of volunteers met in front of the emergency room for an emotional goodbye before the Americans left for Kerem Shalom, Dr. Ghanem said.

He had arrived with the team in Gaza on May 1, expecting to stay until May 13. Another team was scheduled to replace them two days later.

But about a week into his time in Gaza, as Israel ordered evacuations in parts of Rafah, he began to worry. Their group leaders convened the team to discuss the possibility of evacuation and began drawing up a list of which doctors should leave first based on family or work obligations.

Meanwhile, it sounded like the explosions were getting closer, Dr. Ghanem said. The borders remained closed, and two days after they were supposed to leave, there had been no new confirmation that anyone could leave, he said.

On Thursday, the group leaders told the team that they had heard from the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem that only Americans would be allowed to evacuate.

Deciding to leave was difficult, Dr. Ghanem said, complicated by the fact that colleagues from countries including Saudi Arabia, Australia and Jordan were not allowed to.

“We felt that we had to evacuate because we need to go back home,” he said. “We need to take care of our broken families and support them.”

The journey from the European General Hospital, near Khan Younis, to the Kerem Shalom crossing with Israel was coordinated by COGAT, the Israeli agency that oversees policy for the Palestinian territories and works with international organizations, and the American Embassy, said Dr. Musleh, of the Palestinian American Medical Association.

The 12-mile trip took almost five hours, Dr. Ghanem said, because the roads that they had been told to take for safety reasons had been damaged by bombardment. They also had car trouble.

After crossing into Israel, the U.S. Embassy team that met them drove them to Jerusalem. After a few hours’ sleep, Dr. Ghanem started the even longer journey back to Michigan, where he lives with his wife and three children.

Edward Wong contributed reporting.

Trucks of aid began entering Gaza through a U.S.-built pier, but officials say it is not enough.

The territory of 2.2 million civilians is more reliant than ever on humanitarian aid. The devastation after seven months of Israeli bombardment, strict Israeli inspections and restrictions on crossing points had already severely limited what could enter. And over the past week and a half, the flow of aid through the main land crossings in southern Gaza has been reduced nearly to a trickle since Israel began a military assault around the city of Rafah.

Israel has come under pressure from the Biden administration and other allies to do more to ease the entry of aid, with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken warning this week that recent improvements in relief delivery were being undercut by the fighting in southern Gaza.

The supplies included in the initial deliveries were a fraction of the need in Gaza: food bars for 11,000 people, therapeutic food for 7,200 malnourished children and hygiene kits for 30,000 people, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development. The British government said it had sent 8,400 temporary shelters made up of plastic sheeting.

“More aid will follow in the coming weeks, but we know the maritime route is not the only answer,” Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain said in a statement.

It was not immediately clear where in the enclave the aid would be delivered or when. The U.N. World Food Program said in a statement that it would handle logistics in Gaza for aid coming through the pier, including coordinating trucks, overseeing the loading of supplies, dispatching them to warehouses and handing them over to “humanitarian partners.”

Pentagon officials said they were initially aiming to deliver about 90 trucks of aid each day, increasing that to about 150 trucks when the operation reached capacity. Some 500 trucks of commercial goods and aid arrived in Gaza each day before the war began last October.

Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III spoke about the maritime corridor in a call with his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, on Thursday, according to the Pentagon. Mr. Austin stressed the need to “surge” humanitarian assistance to Gaza, through land border crossings in addition to the pier, according to the department.

Israel’s military said it had been working with the U.S. military to support the project as a “top priority.”

Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, deputy commander of the Central Command, said the pier would only complement the flow of aid through land crossings, which he emphasized were “the most efficient and effective pathway to move the necessary volume of assistance.”

One of Gaza’s two main crossings for aid, in Rafah on the border with Egypt, has been closed since Israel began its military operation against Hamas fighters there. Israel shut down the second major crossing, at Kerem Shalom, after a Hamas rocket attack nearby killed four Israeli soldiers last week. That crossing has since reopened, Israel says, but little aid has passed through in recent days.

An aid group, World Central Kitchen, built a makeshift jetty in mid-March to deliver aid by sea to Gaza for the first time in nearly two decades. But those efforts came to an abrupt stop in early April after seven of the group’s workers were killed in an Israeli strike.

Raja Abdulrahim and Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting.

Israel defends its Rafah operation at a U.N. court.

The hearings are part of South Africa’s case accusing Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, which it filed in December. In late January, the court ordered Israel to do more to prevent acts of genocide, but is not expected to hear the main case over whether genocide is being committed until next year.

Last week, South Africa asked the judges to issue an emergency order aiming to prevent wide-scale civilian harm in Rafah. Lawyers for South Africa argued at the court on Thursday that Israel’s Rafah operation was “the last step in the destruction of Gaza and its Palestinian people.”

The court has no means of enforcing its orders, but the South Africa case has contributed to the international pressure on Israel to rein in its campaign in Gaza. It was not clear when the court would issue a decision on South Africa’s request for an emergency order.

On Friday, Gilad Noam, the Israeli deputy attorney general for international law, repeated Israel’s fierce rejection that it was committing genocide in Gaza. He said the Israeli authorities were working to facilitate the flow of humanitarian aid and to protect civilians amid fierce combat across the enclave, including in Rafah.

“Israel is taking steps to try and contend with the massive complexity that such a situation presents,” Mr. Noam told the judges. “That is why there has not been a large-scale assault on Rafah, but rather specific limited and localized operations prefaced with evacuation efforts and support for humanitarian activities.”

Israeli leaders have said that invading Rafah is necessary to topple Hamas’s rule in Gaza. Four battalions of Hamas fighters are in the city, according to the Israeli military, as well as at least some of the over 130 living and dead hostages still held by Palestinian armed groups since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel that set off the war in Gaza.

But the prospect of a major ground invasion of Rafah amid hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians has provoked sharp criticism internationally, including from the Biden administration. After Israel began its advance into the area, President Biden said Washington would withhold some weapons if Israel launched a full-fledged assault into densely populated areas.

Mr. Noam argued that the court ran the risk of engaging in “micromanagement of operational aspects of an armed conflict.” He said that demanding a cease-fire would only tie Israel’s hands because Hamas — an armed group rather than a state — was not subject to the court’s jurisdiction.

South Africa on Thursday also asked the court to order Israel to ensure greater access for aid workers, investigators and journalists in Gaza. Mr. Noam said that Israel’s justice system was working to crack down on alleged wartime misconduct, and that military prosecutors had opened 55 criminal investigations into possible violations by Israeli forces since the beginning of the war.

Human rights groups argue the Israeli military cannot credibly investigate itself and that soldiers who kill Palestinians under contested circ*mstances rarely face substantial penalties. B’Tselem, a leading Israeli human rights monitor, has dismissed previous inquiries by the Israeli authorities into potential violations of the laws of war as a whitewash.

Israeli officials have accused South Africa, by filing the case, of acting as a “legal arm” of Hamas, which led the deadly Oct. 7 attack. Last week, Hamas said that a delegation of its officials had attended a conference in Johannesburg. Hamas posted a photo of Basem Naim, a group spokesman, speaking with Naledi Pandor, South Africa’s foreign minister, on social media.