With undignified staging of the previous hostage handovers in the Gaza Strip, Hamas has brought the ceasefire agreement with Israel to a standstill.

The Islamist terrorist organization Hamas has reportedly handed over the bodies of four Israeli hostages in the Gaza Strip to representatives of the Red Cross. Israeli government officials confirmed the handover of the remains to domestic media late in the evening - but the dead still had to be identified and the relatives informed, they said. Autopsy results were not initially announced overnight.

As requested by the Israeli government, the handover was not staged as a macabre spectacle with armed Hamas fighters and loud music during the handover of the coffins. According to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office, an agreement had been reached with the Islamists in advance. His government had made this a prerequisite for the release of other Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons.

In return for the handover of the dead hostages, around 600 Palestinian prisoners are to be released. According to eyewitnesses, a first bus with around 40 prisoners drove from the Ofer military prison in the occupied West Bank towards Ramallah. The Arab television station Al-Jazeera later showed footage of them being greeted with jubilation when they were reunited with their relatives.

The prisoners - 50 of whom are serving life sentences - were originally supposed to be released last Saturday in exchange for six Israeli hostages. However, angered by the degrading Hamas ceremonies during previous handovers of living and dead hostages, the Israeli government put a stop to this and suspended the releases for the time being.

In view of the falsely reported handover of dead hostages a few days ago, which - as was only later determined - were the remains of other people, the Israeli government remained cautious this time. It wanted to confirm the identity only after forensic examinations of the bodies.

According to media reports and relatives, the remains are believed to be those of four Israeli men aged between 50 and 86. Three of them were kidnapped from two Jewish settlements near the border with the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023. The fourth man was killed that day in an attack by Hamas and other Islamist terrorists on southern Israel, and his body was taken to Gaza.

Hamas has always used the release of hostages to demonstrate its power and turned the fate of the people held captive for many months under cruel conditions into a spectacle for onlookers. The kidnapped people were often paraded on a stage and given visible instructions by armed Islamists to smile and wave to the waiting crowd. Last weekend, an Israeli was forced to kiss two masked Hamas men on the forehead.

The procedure for the handover of four dead hostages last Thursday - including two small children who are also German citizens - also sparked international outrage. Hamas had laid out the coffins on a stage, while numerous cheering onlookers and dozens of masked Islamists gathered at the handover site and played loud music.

If the identity of the bodies now handed over is confirmed, the handover of 33 hostages from the Gaza Strip - including eight dead - as planned in the first phase of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas would be completed. In return, 1,904 Palestinian prisoners would be released. The first phase of the agreement is officially set to end this weekend.

According to the Qatari government, which is acting as mediator, the agreement provides that the first phase can continue as long as both parties negotiate the second phase, which should lead to a definitive end to the war and the release of the remaining hostages. The fighting could therefore remain suspended - although both warring parties have reportedly not yet held any serious negotiations on the second phase, contrary to what was planned. It is believed that 59 hostages are still being held in the Gaza Strip, but only 27 of them are said to be alive.

The Gaza war was triggered by the unprecedented massacre on October 7, 2023, in which Hamas terrorists and other Islamists killed around 1,200 people and abducted more than 250 others from Israel to the Gaza Strip. Since then, according to the Hamas-controlled health authority in the Gaza Strip, more than 48,300 people have been killed, including many women and minors. The figures make no distinction between fighters and civilians and cannot be independently confirmed, but are considered fairly credible by the United Nations.