Israel on Saturday returned the bodies of 15 Palestinians to Gaza, hospital officials in the strip said, a day after militants returned the remains of a hostage to Israel under the terms of the tenuous ceasefire agreement in the two-year war. The exchange marked another step forward for the tenuous, US-brokered truce. As part of the deal, Israel has returned the remains of 15 Palestinians for each Israeli hostage. The Nasser Hospital in the city of Khan Younis said the 15 bodies were brought there.
The return came shortly after Israel confirmed the remains given back Friday night were of an Israeli man who died while fighting Hamas in the militants’ October 7, 2023, attack that started the war. The hostage’s body was identified as that of Lior Rudaeff, according to a statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office. Meanwhile, Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian farmers and journalists in the occupied West Bank on Saturday, the latest violence to mar the territory.
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum said Rudaeff was born in Argentina and moved to Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak, a farming community in southern Israel, as a child. He volunteered for more than 40 years as an ambulance driver and was a member of the community’s emergency response team. The forum said he was killed in the Hamas-led attack and that his body was taken to Gaza.
Since the ceasefire took effect on October 10, Palestinian militants have released the remains of 23 hostages, including Rudaeff’s body, with five still remaining in Gaza. Including the remains returned on Saturday, Israel has handed over the bodies of 300 Palestinians. Health officials in Gaza have struggled to identify the bodies without access to DNA kits, and have so far identified 89 of the bodies, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Under the terms of the US-brokered ceasefire, Israel is supposed to allow substantially more aid into Gaza. However, relief efforts under the pact still fall well short of what is needed in Gaza, according to Farhan Haqq, deputy spokesperson for the United Nations. More than 200,000 metric tons of aid is positioned to move into Gaza, but only 37,000 tons, mostly food, have been admitted, he said. The 2023 Hamas-led attack on southern Israel killed about 1,200 people and saw 251 taken hostage.
Israel’s sweeping military offensive has killed more than 68,800 Palestinians in Gaza, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The ministry, part of the Hamas-run Governmentand staffed by medical professionals, maintains detailed records viewed as generally reliable by independent experts. Palestinian health officials said 11 people were injured in an attack by Israeli settlers in the West Bank, the latest as settler violence reaches new highs during this year’s olive harvest.
The UN humanitarian office has said that in October, it documented the highest monthly number of Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians and their property in the West Bank since the office began keeping track in 2006. There were over 260 attacks, or an average of eight incidents per day, the office said. Palestinian paramedics said that journalists, volunteers and farmers were among those injured in the attack on the central town of Beita. A Palestinian photographer for Reuters was among the injured.
The circumstances of the attack were not immediately clear, and Israel’s military did not respond to a request for comment. A video of the aftermath circulating in Palestinian media shows a man holding a camera, blood trickling down his face and chest. It then showed the inside of a hospital, where a man in a journalist’s vest marked “press” and others with bandages on their heads were lying on the beds. With settler violence surging in the territory, volunteers, activists, and journalists have joined this year’s olive harvest in an attempt to help Palestinian farmers safely reach and return from their fields.
