Israelis Gird for Release of Bodies of Captives From Gaza

Israelis waited anxiously on Wednesday for the expected release of the bodies of four hostages by Hamas the following day as part of the cease-fire deal in Gaza.

Israelis and Palestinians have been gripped by emotional homecomings during the truce, which began in late January. As part of the deal’s first phase, Hamas committed to returning 25 Israelis held hostage in Gaza and the remains of eight others in exchange for 1,500 Palestinian prisoners jailed by Israel.

For the past few weeks, Israelis have watched tearful parents and siblings embrace their freed loved ones, many of whom had scarcely been heard from since they were kidnapped by Hamas and its allies during the Oct. 7, 2023, assault on southern Israel.

Palestinians have greeted released prisoners, some of whom spent decades in Israeli jails for militant attacks. Many others were detained indefinitely without charges.

The scenes anticipated on Thursday in Israel are likely to be much more somber.

“Tomorrow is going to be a difficult day for Israel. It will be a harrowing day, a day of grief,” Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said in a short statement Wednesday.

The Israeli government has said that more than 30 of the hostages in Gaza are presumed dead, their remains still held by Palestinian militants. Some hostages were killed during the Oct. 7 attack and brought dead into Gaza; others died in Israeli airstrikes; and some were executed by their captors, among other fates, according to the Israeli military.

Hamas said on Wednesday night that it would turn over the bodies of Shiri Bibas and her two young children, as well the remains of an elderly Israeli man. The Israeli government confirmed that it had received the list of names.

Ms. Bibas, 32 at the time, was kidnapped alongside her two redheaded children — Ariel, 4, and Kfir, who was not yet nine months old. In November 2023, Hamas said all three had been killed in an Israeli airstrike. Israeli officials have expressed concern for their fate but have not confirmed their deaths.

Ms. Bibas’s husband, Yarden, was abducted separately and taken, wounded, to the Gaza Strip. He was freed as part of the cease-fire earlier this month in a highly choreographed Hamas release ceremony. For Israelis and others, the family’s ordeal was emblematic of the cruelty of the 2023 Hamas attack that ignited the war in Gaza.

Hamas said the fourth dead hostage to be returned is Oded Lifshitz, 84, who was abducted alongside his wife, Yocheved Lifshitz, during the Hamas attack. Like the Bibas family, he was kidnapped from Nir Oz, an Israeli community near the Gaza Strip.

Mr. Lifshitz, a retired journalist, was a volunteer who ferried Gazans who had received Israeli entry permits for medical treatment to hospitals. Hamas released Ms. Lifshitz in late October 2023 for “humanitarian reasons” but kept her husband in captivity.

The bodies of the Israeli hostages will be ferried by the International Committee of the Red Cross to Israeli forces. They will then be brought back to Israel for forensic testing to verify their identity and, if possible, establish the cause of death, which could take time.

Under the terms of the agreement, in exchange for the four bodies, Israel will release Gazan prisoners, including women and minors who have not been accused of participating in the Oct. 7 attacks.

Hamas is expected to release six living Israeli hostages on Saturday. The following week, it will send back the remains of four more Israeli hostages, which will round out the list that the two sides agreed upon under the terms of the cease-fire deal. They will be exchanged for Palestinian prisoners.

Assuming the releases go forward as planned, dozens of living hostages and more than 30 others presumed dead by Israel will remain in Gaza by early March. Hamas abducted more than 250 people — mostly civilians — during the October 2023 attack.

Israel and Hamas agreed that the initial phase of the deal would last six weeks, during which they would negotiate the next step. The first phase is set to end on March 2, but talks to extend the agreement into a second phase have yet to begin, according to the Qatari government, which has been brokering the truce alongside Egypt and the United States.

Analysts say it is far from clear that both sides will reach an agreement on the second phase, which is supposed to end the war, free the remaining living hostages and ensure a full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.

Israeli leaders have said they will not countenance anything short of the end of Hamas’s rule and the demilitarization of Gaza. Hamas has shown little appetite to take apart its military wing or send its Gaza leaders into exile.