Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attending a ceremony on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem on Oct. 16, 2025. (Credit: Alex Kolomoisky/Pool via Reuters)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned on Saturday that the war in the Gaza Strip would only end definitively with the disarmament of Hamas and the demilitarization of the Palestinian territory, as provided for in the second phase of the cease-fire agreement.
The Israeli army, for its part, announced that the Red Cross was on its way in the evening to recover “several” hostage bodies in southern Gaza, after Hamas’s armed wing said it would hand over at 7:00 p.m. the remains of two hostages that it claimed to have found earlier in the day.
Earlier, Israel had conditioned the reopening of the crossing point between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, crucial for the entry of humanitarian aid into the devastated Palestinian territory, on the return of all deceased hostages.
“The second phase of the ceasefire agreement includes ‘the disarmament of Hamas, or more precisely the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip, and before that, the confiscation of Hamas’s weapons,’” Netanyahu said on Channel 14.
“When that has been successfully accomplished, hopefully easily, but if not, by force, then the war will end,” he added, as Hamas has so far rejected any disarmament.
Netanyahu’s office stated that the reopening of the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt “will be considered depending on how Hamas fulfills its obligations regarding the return of hostages and bodies, and the implementation of the agreed framework.” The crossing, whose reopening is demanded by the humanitarian community, will remain closed “until further notice,” the office added.
This closure “blocks the entry of specialized equipment needed” to search for bodies under the rubble and “will cause significant delays in the recovery and handover of remains,” Hamas said in a statement.
‘Enormous task’
The UN’s head of humanitarian operations, Tom Fletcher, the first senior UN official to visit the Gaza Strip since the cease-fire on Oct. 10, visited Gaza City on Saturday, where he noted the “enormous” task facing the humanitarian community in providing basic services and food.
“I was here seven or eight months ago. Most of these buildings were still standing. But now, it is absolutely dreadful to see such a vast part of the city turned into a landscape of desolation,” he told AFP in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood, where he inspected a wastewater treatment plant.
Much of the Palestinian territory was destroyed during the Israeli offensive launched in retaliation for Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
The Israeli army controls all access to the Gaza Strip. The cease-fire agreement, based on Donald Trump’s plan, provides for a massive influx of humanitarian aid for the civilian population, which lacks everything.
“We now have a massive 60-day plan to step up food supplies, distribute one million meals a day, begin rebuilding the health sector, set up winter tents, and get hundreds of thousands of children back to school,” Fletcher said.
The body of a hostage identified
He said that the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) faces “a huge task … but we owe it to the people here who have endured so much.”
On the ground, rescue workers are working to recover the bodies of Palestinians buried under the rubble, while Hamas searches for the remains of hostages it still must hand over to Israel.
To assist in the search, a team from the Turkish disaster management agency is waiting on the Egyptian side to be allowed into Gaza, according to a Turkish official.
Under the cease-fire agreement, Hamas was required to release all hostages, living and dead, no later than Monday, Oct. 13, at 9:00 a.m.. It released the last 20 living hostages on time but has since handed over only ten of the 28 bodies it was holding.
On Saturday, Israeli authorities announced that they had identified the body handed over the previous day by Hamas. It was Eliyahu Margalit, a man in his seventies killed on Oct. 7. In return, the Israeli army handed over the bodies of 15 Palestinians.
11 dead in Gaza, according to rescue services
According to the Civil Defense of the territory, eleven Palestinians were killed Friday by Israeli fire on a bus carrying displaced persons in Gaza City. The Israeli army said its soldiers had fired on a “suspicious vehicle.”
The Israeli offensive, launched after Hamas’s massacre of Oct. 7, 2023, in Israel, has left 68,116 dead in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to figures from the Gaza Health Ministry, and has caused a humanitarian disaster.
According to the Gaza Health Minister, also under Hamas control, more than 400 bodies have been recovered from the rubble since Oct. 10. Local authorities estimate that about 10,000 bodies remain buried there.
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