Hamas turns handover of dead hostages into a spectacle

TEL AVIV—Hamas displayed coffins that it said held the bodies of four Israeli hostages before a crowd of militants before handing them over to Israel on Thursday, in a spectacle that included taunts and anti-Israel slogans.

Each coffin had a photo of a hostage on it, including two young redheaded children, with a picture of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over which was written: “the killer.”

The coffins were placed on a stage before cheering spectators and cameras that broadcast the scenes on Arab television channels. The International Committee of the Red Cross, who received the remains and transferred them to Israeli custody, initially tried to shield them from view with large white screens.

Israeli broadcasters didn’t air the images.

Amid the crowds were some Palestinians recently released by Israel in the cease-fire deal who were supposed to be exiled from Gaza, according to the terms of the agreement. Those spotted in the crowds included Mohammed Abu Warda, who was sentenced for planning a 1996 bus bombing that killed more than 40 Israelis.

For the first time since the start of a fragile cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, under which the militant group agreed to free hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, those returning to Israel are dead. Hamas said they include three members of a family whose capture became symbolic of the horrors of the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, that sparked the war in Gaza.

Israelis clung to hope for more than a year that Shiri Bibas and her two sons Ariel and Kfir, who were just four years old and nine months old when they were kidnapped by Hamas, might somehow still be alive. On Thursday, those hopes were shattered.

Behind a stage set up in the southern Gazan city of Khan Younis, a banner showed Netanyahu likened to a vampire, with blood dripping down his chin, blaming him for their deaths. In the early days of the war, Hamas said Shiri and the children had been killed by an Israeli airstrike. Israel never officially confirmed their deaths or addressed the possibility they were killed by an airstrike.

“We Never Forgave nor Forgot,” another banner read, an apparent reference to the phrase written on the clothes put on Palestinian prisoners who were released in last week’s exchange.

Hamas said the body of Oded Lifshitz, who was 83 years old at the time of his capture, was also among those returned. It isn’t clear when or how Lifshitz died. He and his wife, Yocheved, both peace activists, were taken from kibbutz Nir Oz near the Gaza border. His wife, who was 85 when taken, was released alive by Hamas in October 2023 after 17 days in captivity along with three other women. Her family says she was released because she was sick and the militants were worried the illness would spread to others in the tunnels.

“It isn’t over today,” Izhar Lifshitz, Oded Lifshitz’s son, told Army Radio on Thursday morning shortly before the handover. “It will be over when everyone is back.”

The remains of all four hostages will be examined at a forensic lab in Tel Aviv to confirm their identities. In exchange for the bodies, Israel will release a group of Palestinian prisoners. Hamas has agreed to free another six living hostages on Saturday as the first phase of the cease-fire nears its end.

An Israeli military rabbi was set to hold a short ceremony after the bodies were handed over, reading the Kaddish, a traditional Jewish prayer said over the dead and chapters from Psalms, per requests from the families. Troops will fire ceremonial shots into the air, and a convoy will take the bodies across the border.

The makeshift Hostage Square in Tel Aviv, where people have gathered each week to watch captives being freed, was filled with Israeli flags on Thursday that fluttered in the early morning rain. Once the weather cleared, a small crowd of families, friends and supporters cried and embraced each other in silence as they watched a tribute video to the hostages on a large screen set up in the center of the square.

The return of the Bibas family is especially sensitive for Israelis, many of whom have been reluctant to accept that they had died. Their fate became hard to deny in recent weeks, when Shiri wasn’t freed along with other women in the early stages of the deal.

The Bibas family lived just over a mile away from the Gaza border in a kibbutz called Nir Oz. It was one of the hardest-hit communities during the attack, with locals saying a quarter of its 400 residents were killed or kidnapped by Hamas militants who overtook the town on Oct. 7. Residents said help didn’t arrive until the afternoon.

Shiri, then 33 years old, was hiding with her husband, Yarden, and their two sons in a shelter in their home as the militants arrived on Oct. 7. As they closed in, Yarden left the shelter to try to protect them, but he himself was captured. Yarden, who was held separately from his family, was released in an earlier hostage exchange under the cease-fire.

“[The] heart of the entire nation is torn. My own heart is torn. So is yours. And all of the world’s heart should be torn, because this demonstrates who we are dealing with, what we are dealing with such monsters,” Netanyahu said late Wednesday.

“We are grieving, we are in pain, but we are also determined to ensure that such a thing never happens again,” he said.

Write to Feliz Solomon at feliz.solomon@wsj.com and Anat Peled at anat.peled@wsj.com