The White House said Sunday that Israel’s decision to hold off on releasing 602 Palestinian prisoners was an “appropriate response” to Hamas’s abuse of Israeli captives and the parading of the caskets of young boys Ariel and Kfir Bibas, whose bodies were returned to Israel on Thursday.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had deferred the release of prisoners set to be freed Saturday until Hamas commits to stop holding propaganda ceremonies when handing over hostages to the Red Cross. In response, the terror group said it would halt talks on the rest of the month-old ceasefire and hostage deal with Israel.
In a statement, US National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes said that “given Hamas’s barbaric treatment of the hostages, including the hideous parade of the Bibas children’s coffins through the streets of Gaza, Israel’s decision to delay the release of prisoners is an appropriate response.”
“The president is prepared to support Israel in whatever course of action it chooses regarding Hamas,” said Hughes.
US President Donald Trump said Friday that he would back Israel whether it stuck to the ceasefire with Hamas or resumed hostilities in Gaza. He described Netanyahu as “very angry” over the “barbaric” killing of Ariel and Kfir Bibas.
The children’s bodies were returned to Israel along with that of hostage Oded Lifshitz and an unidentified Gazan woman that Hamas initially said was Shiri Bibas, Ariel and Kfir’s mother. The terror group returned Shiri Bibas’s body early Saturday after Israel protested.
After confirming the slain captives’ identities, Israeli authorities issued assessments that their captors had “brutally” murdered the mother alongside her two sons, contrary to Hamas’s claim that they were killed in an Israeli airstrike.
Israeli authorities determined that Ariel and Kfir’s captors killed them “in cold blood” with their “bare hands” and committed atrocities to hide the proof.
Yarden Bibas, Shiri’s husband and the boys’ father, had returned to Israel alive on February 1, in the fourth hostage release of the first phase of the ceasefire and hostage deal with Hamas.
The family was kidnapped from its home in Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages, sparking the war in Gaza.
The first phase of the hostage deal required Hamas to release 33 women, children, civilian men over 50 and those deemed “humanitarian cases,” in return for some 1,900 Palestinian prisoners, including over 270 serving life sentences for killing dozens of Israelis.
Netanyahu has thus far held off on negotiating the deal’s second phase, which would see Hamas release returning living hostages. The premier’s right-wing flank has threatened to topple the government should it proceed to the second phase, which would require an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
Terror groups in the Gaza are holding 63 hostages — 62 kidnapped in the Hamas onslaught and the body of Lt. Hadar Goldin, who was killed in the 2014 war against the terror group. At least 36 hostages have been confirmed dead by the IDF.
In the current hostage deal, Hamas has so far released 30 hostages — 20 Israeli civilians, five soldiers, and five Thai nationals — as well as the bodies of Lifshitz and Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir Bibas.
The terror group had freed 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November 2023, and four hostages were released before that in the early weeks of the war.
Eight hostages have been rescued from captivity by troops alive, and the bodies of 41 have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the Israeli military as they tried to escape their captors, and the body of a Staff Sgt. Oron Shaul, who was killed in 2014.