Netanyahu vows revenge after Hamas hands over bodies of 4 hostages; Trump’s Gaza plan ‘not about evictions’ - envoy

The US envoy to the Middle East said on Thursday that President Donald Trump’s plan for Gaza was not about evicting Palestinians, and the conversation about Gaza’s future was being shifted towards how to create a better future for Palestinians.

A few hours after Hamas said it would return the bodies of Israeli hostages Shiri Bibas and her two little children on Thursday, her sister-in-law said she had not given up hope of seeing them return home, alive.

Netanyahu vows revenge after Hamas hands over bodies of youngest hostages

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed revenge on Hamas on Thursday after the group released what it said were the bodies of four Israeli hostages, including the infant Kfir Bibas and his four-year-old brother Ariel, the youngest of those abducted during the 7 October 2023 attack.

Palestinian militants handed over four black coffins in a carefully orchestrated public display, with dozens of armed Hamas militants and crowds of Palestinians gathering to watch.

United Nations human rights chief Volker Turk criticised the handoff, saying that the parading of bodies was abhorrent and cruel and that it flew in the face of international law.

“Under international law, any handover of the remains of deceased must comply with the prohibition of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, ensuring respect for the dignity of the deceased and their families,” he said in a statement.

Israelis lined the road in the rain near the Gaza border to pay their respects as the convoy carrying the coffins drove by.

“We stand here together, with a broken heart, the sky is also crying with us and we pray to see better days,” said one woman, who gave her name only as Efrat.

In Tel Aviv, people gathered, some weeping, in a public square, opposite Israel’s defence headquarters, at what has come to be known as Hostages Square.

“Agony. Pain. There are no words. Our hearts — the hearts of an entire nation — lie in tatters,” said President Isaac Herzog.

Netanyahu vowed to eliminate Hamas in a recorded address released after the remains of the hostages were handed over, saying “the four coffins” obliged Israel to ensure “more than ever” that there was no repeat of the 7 October attack.

“Our loved ones’ blood is shouting at us from the soil and is obliging us to settle the score with the despicable murderers, and we will,” he said.

Israeli officials have repeatedly asserted that Hamas would be destroyed over the course of the 16-month-old conflict and that the roughly 250 hostages abducted during the October 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel would be returned home.

During Thursday’s handover, one militant stood beside a poster of a man standing over coffins wrapped in Israeli flags. It read “The Return of the War = The Return of your Prisoners in Coffins”.

The purported remains of the boys, their mother Shiri Bibas and a fourth hostage, Oded Lifshitz, were handed over under the Gaza ceasefire agreement reached last month with the backing of the US and the mediation of Qatar and Egypt.

Kfir Bibas was nine months old when the Bibas family, including their father Yarden, was abducted at Kibbutz Nir Oz, one of a string of communities near Gaza that were overrun by Hamas-led attackers from Gaza.

Hamas said in November 2023 that the boys and their mother had been killed in an Israeli airstrike but their deaths were never confirmed by Israeli authorities.

“Shiri and the kids became a symbol,” said Yiftach Cohen, of the Nir Oz kibbutz, which lost around a quarter of its residents, either killed or kidnapped, during the assault.

Yarden Bibas was returned in an exchange for prisoners this month.

The handover marks the first return of dead bodies during the current agreement.

Lifshitz’s family later said in a statement that they had been informed that his body had been formally identified.

“Our family’s healing process will begin now and will not end until the last hostage is returned,” said the family.

The prime minister’s office said that Lifshitz was murdered in captivity by Islamic Jihad, another militant group in Gaza.

Chen Kugel, the head of the Israel National Center of Forensic Medicine, later said in a televised statement that Lifshitz had been murdered more than a year ago.

The Hamas-led attack on Israel killed some 1,200 people, according to Israeli tallies, with 251 kidnapped. Israel’s subsequent military campaign has killed some 48,000 people, say Palestinian health authorities, and left densely populated Gaza in ruins.

Thursday’s handover of bodies will be followed by the return of six living hostages on Saturday, in exchange for hundreds more Palestinians, expected to be women and minors detained by Israeli forces in Gaza during the war.

Negotiations for a second phase, expected to cover the return of around 60 remaining hostages, less than half of whom are believed to be alive, and a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip to allow an end to the war, are expected to begin in the coming days.

US envoy says Trump’s Gaza plan is not about evictions

The US envoy to the Middle East said on Thursday that President Donald Trump’s plan for Gaza was not about evicting Palestinians, and the conversation about Gaza’s future was being shifted towards how to create a better future for Palestinians.

Trump proposed on 4 February 4 that the US should take over Gaza, with Palestinians resettled in other places including Egypt and Jordan, a suggestion which caused an international outcry.

However, speaking at a Miami conference hosted by a non-profit linked to the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund, US envoy Steven Witkoff said that Trump’s comments on Gaza were more about trying different solutions to those proposed over the previous 50 years.

He said that the war between Israel and Hamas has left much of Gaza destroyed and littered with unexploded ordnance, and it was impossible to see how people could return.

“It’s going to take a lot of clean-up and imagination, and a great master plan, and that doesn’t mean we’re on an eviction plan, when the President talks about this,” Witkoff told the FII Institute event.

“It means he wants to shake up everyone’s thinking and think about what is compelling and what is the best solution for the Palestinian people.

“For instance, do they want to live in a home there, or would they rather have an opportunity to resettle in some sort of better place, to have jobs, upside and financial prospects?” he added.

Hope turns to heartbreak for Israel’s Bibas hostage family

A few hours after Hamas said it would return the bodies of Israeli hostages Shiri Bibas and her two little children on Thursday, her sister-in-law said she had not given up hope of seeing them return home, alive.

“I ask you not to eulogise my family yet,” Ofri Bibas Levy posted on Facebook. “We have been hoping for 16 months and we will not give up hope now.”

But when Hamas unveiled black coffins on a stage under a rain-washed grey sky in southern Gaza, with the photos of the two Bibas children and their mother pinned onto them, one on each of the caskets, hope in Israel turned to grief.

Shiri Bibas and her ginger-haired sons, Ariel and baby Kfir, have become symbols for Israelis of the ruthlessness of the 7 October 2023 attack, when they were abducted by Palestinian militants from their kibbutz, Nir Oz, and taken to Gaza.

One in four Nir Oz residents were either killed or kidnapped that day. Images of a terrified Shiri Bibas surrounded by gunmen and clutching her boys, aged four and nine months at the time, circulated on social media within hours of the abduction.

People carrying Israeli flags lined the 232 road near the Gaza border to pay tribute as a convoy transporting the bodies to Israel’s forensic institute for identification drove past.

“We all hoped that this story would end differently. This is so sad and painful,” said Noan Zuntz, from a nearby kibbutz.

A few kilometres away, in Nir Oz, tricycles and toys were still scattered on the lawn outside the Bibas’ home, while the bullet-pierced front door carried posters of the four smiling family members.

Saudi Arabia invites leaders of Gulf states, Egypt and Jordan for talks

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had invited the leaders of Gulf Arab countries, Egypt and Jordan for a meeting in Riyadh on Friday, reported the Saudi state news agency SPA on Thursday.

Arab states have pledged to work on a post-war plan for the Gaza Strip’s reconstruction to counter Trump’s proposal to redevelop the enclave as an international beach resort after resettling its Palestinian inhabitants elsewhere.

Saudi Arabia said Friday’s meeting would be unofficial and held within “the framework of the close brotherly relations that bring together the leaders”, said SPA.

“As for joint Arab action and the decisions issued regarding it, it will be on the agenda of the upcoming emergency Arab summit that will be held in the sisterly Arab Republic of Egypt,” added SPA, referring to plans for an emergency Arab summit on 4 March to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Israeli bullets and shells kill three Palestinians in West Bank refugee camp

Three Palestinians were killed on Wednesday by Israeli forces in the al-Faraa camp near Tubas in the occupied West Bank, reported the Palestinian state news agency Wafa.

Security forces told Wafa the three people were killed after the Israeli military fired bullets and shells at their home.

The Israeli army said on Wednesday that the three people were “wanted terrorists who sold weapons for terror purposes”. They said two other individuals were detained.

Wednesday’s incident comes as Israel continues with a weekslong offensive that has demolished houses and torn up vital infrastructure in refugee camps in the West Bank.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been forced to leave their homes in refugee camps in the West Bank due to the large-scale Israeli counter-terrorism operation which began in the northern West Bank city of Jenin on 21 January.

Israel, viewing the West Bank as part of a multifront war against Iranian-backed groups established around its borders, launched the operation after reaching a ceasefire in its war in Gaza against the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

Yemeni minister calls for arrest of Houthi officials at Nasrallah’s funeral

Yemeni Information Minister Moammar al-Eryani called on Wednesday for the arrest of a group of leaders from Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis who he said would attend Lebanese Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah’s funeral in Beirut.

Nasrallah, who had served as Hezbollah’s secretary general for more than 30 years, was killed on 27 September as Israel ramped up its attacks on southern Lebanon. His funeral is scheduled for 23 February.

Eryani demanded that the Lebanese government arrest the Houthi leaders and hand them over to the rival internationally recognised government in a post on X.

He did not name the Houthi officials.

Neither the Lebanese government nor Houthi leaders were immediately available for comment.

The Houthis did not officially announce a delegation was attending the funeral, but the Houthi-run Al-Masirah TV reported a delegation from Yemen would participate.

“We affirm that the movement of these terrorist leaders ... in this timing is not a mere participation in the funeral, which is being used as a cover, to gather all the leaders of the Iranian axis and assess the situation after the blows they received,” he added.

The Yemeni minister was referring to the recent Israeli attacks against Iran-backed groups in the region including Hezbollah and the Houthis.

Both groups launched parallel attacks against Israel during its war in Gaza to show support for Palestinians.

The Houthis, who control northern Yemen, also carried out more than 100 attacks on ships off the shores of Yemen since November 2023, disrupting global shipping and causing route changes and losses. DM

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