JERUSALEM/TEL AVIV/GAZA (Reuters) – Militant group Hamas said on Thursday it was ready to begin talks on the second phase of a ceasefire in Gaza after several hundred Palestinians were released from Israeli jails overnight in return for the bodies of four Israeli hostages.
It was the final exchange of the six-week first phase of a ceasefire that came into effect on January 19 in the war in Gaza.
Talks have yet to begin on a second phase, meant to lead ultimately to a permanent end to the war that began in October, 2023 when Hamas-led fighters stormed Israeli towns and Israel responded with a retaliatory assault that has devastated the enclave.
Hamas said on Thursday the only way remaining hostages in Gaza would be freed is through commitment to the ceasefire.
“We renew our full commitment to the ceasefire agreement, and confirm our readiness to enter into negotiations for the second phase of the agreement,” the group said in a statement.
Israeli Energy Minister Eli Cohen said returning the remaining 59 hostages was a top priority, but that there will be no agreement on the second stage of the ceasefire if Hamas is left intact in Gaza.
“Our demands are clear,” Cohen, a security cabinet member, told public broadcaster Kan.
Cohen said Israel was in a stronger position to negotiate now than it was on the eve of the ceasefire because it has full backing from the U.S. administration of President Donald Trump, which this month began shipping heavy bombs.
Egyptian mediators on Wednesday secured the handover of the bodies of the final four hostages in the deal’s first phase, in return for 620 Palestinians either detained by Israeli forces in Gaza or jailed in Israel.
Israel had earlier refused to release prisoners on Saturday after Hamas handed over six hostages in a staged ceremony.
Hamas had been displaying living hostages and coffins carrying hostage remains on stage in front of a crowd in Gaza before handing them over, to sharp criticism including from the United Nations.
The final handover did not include such a ceremony.
Israel received coffins carrying the remains of the four hostages, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in the early hours of Thursday.
President Isaac Herzog in a post on X confirmed the bodies as those of Tsachi Idan, Itzhak Elgarat, Ohad Yahalomi and Shlomo Mantzur, all of whom were abducted during the October 7, 2023 attack from their kibbutz homes near Gaza.
“In this difficult hour, there is some comfort in the fact that they will be laid to rest in the tomb of Israel,” he wrote.
Hamas took 251 hostages and killed about 1,200 people in its October raid on southern Israeli communities, according to Israel.
At least 48,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s subsequent assault on Gaza, Palestinian authorities say. The war has laid waste to the crowded coastal enclave and displaced the majority of its population multiple times.
The Palestinians released overnight include 445 men and 24 women and minors detained in Gaza, as well as 151 prisoners serving life sentences for deadly attacks on Israelis, according to a Hamas source.
One bus transported detainees from Israel’s Ofer prison in the Occupied West Bank to Ramallah where cheering crowds had gathered to greet them.
Released prisoner Bilal Yassin, 42, told Reuters he had been in Israeli detention for 20 years.
“Our sacrifices and imprisonment were not in vain,” Yassin said. “We had confidence in the (Palestinian) resistance.”
Nearly 100 more Palestinian prisoners were handed over to Egypt, where they will stay until another country accepts them, according to a Hamas source and Egyptian media.
(Reporting by Rami Amichay, Nafisa Eltahir, Yomna Ehab, Maayan Lubell, Ali Sawafta, Nidal al-Mughrabi and Ahmed Tolba; Additional reporting by Clauda Tanios and Jana Choukeir in Dubai, Emily Rose in Tel Aviv; Writing by Sharon Singleton; Editing by Peter Graff)
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