(Reuters): On Thursday, Hamas turned over the bodies of Israeli newborn Kfir Bibas and his sibling Ariel, who is four years old. They became potent icons of the misery committed on that day and were the youngest prisoners seized in the October 7, 2023, attack.
Red Cross vans arrived at the location where the transfer took place in the Gaza Strip. On a stage were four black coffins, each with a little picture of the captives who had died within.
As the handover took place, armed Hamas members in camouflage and black uniforms surrounded the location.
Before being transported to Israel, Israeli military officers checked the coffins for possible bombs after the remains were turned over.
Many Israelis waited by the side of the road to show their respects as the caravan carrying the coffins made its way through the rain close to the Gaza border.
One of them, a woman called Efrat, shared her anguish, stating that everyone present was grieving together and that even the sky appeared to be crying with them as they all hoped for brighter times to come.
People gathered outside Israel's defense headquarters in Tel Aviv at Hostages Square. Some people sobbed in public as they lamented the terrible loss.
Isaac Herzog, the president of Israel, said that words could not express the extent of the country's sorrow and characterized the feelings of the moment as tremendous sadness. He underlined that Israel's collective heart was broken.
During the handover, a Hamas militant stood beside a poster depicting a man standing over Israeli-flag-wrapped coffins. The figure’s legs were replaced with tree roots, symbolizing Palestinian claims to the land. The message on the poster warned that renewed war would result in the return of hostages in coffins.
The Bibas brothers, along with their mother Shiri Bibas, and another hostage, Oded Lifschitz, were handed over as part of a ceasefire agreement mediated by the United States, Qatar, and Egypt last month.
The Red Cross had urged that the handover be conducted with dignity, following increasing criticism of Hamas’s practice of staging hostage release events, which even the United Nations condemned as exploitative.
Kfir Bibas was only nine months old when his entire family was taken hostage from Kibbutz Nir Oz, one of several Israeli communities near Gaza targeted in the October 7 assault.
Hamas claimed in November 2023 that Shiri Bibas and her two children had died in an Israeli airstrike, but Israeli authorities never confirmed their deaths until the bodies were recovered.
According to Yiftach Cohen, a resident of Kibbutz Nir Oz, Shiri, and her kids had come to represent the catastrophe that had befallen their community. Nearly a fourth of Nir Oz's population was killed or abducted during the invasion, resulting in massive losses.
Yarden Bibas, the father of the two boys, was recently returned to Israel in a separate prisoner exchange agreement earlier this month.
Among the victims of the October 7 attack were Israelis who had actively supported peace initiatives between Israelis and Palestinians.
Oded Lifschitz, one of the hostages who returned, was 83 years old when he was abducted from Nir Oz. He had been instrumental in establishing the kibbutz decades earlier.
His wife, Yocheved Lifschitz, who was 85 at the time, was also taken hostage but was released two weeks later along with another female captive.
Lifschitz, a former journalist, had previously criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies in an op-ed published in 2019. He pointed to failures, including Netanyahu’s rejection of a two-state solution and a 2011 prisoner exchange deal that freed over 1,000 Palestinians, including Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.
Sinwar later rose to become Hamas’ leader in Gaza and orchestrated the October 7 attack. He was killed during Israel’s military operations in Gaza.
Netanyahu and Israeli defense officials have faced ongoing criticism over the security lapse that allowed the deadly October 7 assault to occur, marking Israel’s bloodiest day in history.
There was a ceasefire in place, and Hamas was handing over the bodies of the Bibas brothers for the very first time. Israel has yet to perform DNA tests to verify their identities.
The Hamas raid on October 7 cost over 1,200 lives and saw 251 people abducted from Israel. According to the Palestinian health authorities, nearly 48,000 people have died in the military assault from Israel, which devastated most of Gaza.
Following the handover of the bodies, six more living hostages are set to be returned on Saturday in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, mostly women and minors, detained by Israeli forces.
Negotiations are expected to begin soon for the return of the roughly 60 hostages who are still alive. Less than half of them are thought to still be alive, and an Israeli military withdrawal from Gaza may be the main topic of talks to put an end to the fighting.
Also read: Israel Threatens War if Hamas Holds Hostages Past Saturday
