On Thursday morning in Gaza, Palestinian resistance factions handed over the bodies of four Israeli captives to the International Committee of the Red Cross. According to Hamas, all four of the Israeli citizens were killed in Israeli airstrikes. Among them are Shiri Bibas and her two young children, Ariel and Kfir.
While major media consistently identify Hamas as the party that took the Bibas family, a different armed faction took responsibility. The Mujahideen Brigades, which started as an offshoot of the ruling Fatah Party’s armed wing, released a statement on Wednesday saying “they were bombed by the Zionist occupation missiles and were killed, along with the captor group” in November 2023. The deaths of the Bibas family were originally announced in late 2023, yet Israeli political leaders and media outlets have continued to suggest they were still alive in what some analysts believe was a cynical campaign to tap into public anger among Israeli society to justify resuming the full-scale war against Gaza.
As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has continued his efforts to sabotage the deal for a ceasefire in Gaza and exchange of captives, Hamas has started to put out substantive public proposals of its own. On Tuesday, Hamas’s Gaza chief, Khalil Al-Hayya, said the group was prepared to negotiate a comprehensive deal for Phase 2 that would include the return of all Israeli captives held in Gaza “as one package,” rather than the staggered weekly releases that have marked Phase 1 of the deal. In return, Hamas and other Palestinian resistance groups would require Israel to completely withdraw all of its forces from the Gaza Strip and for international mediators, including the U.S., to certify a permanent truce.
Hamas also announced it would release all six living Israeli captives slated for exchange in Phase 1 on Saturday, saying it was evidence of the group’s flexibility and willingness to reach a viable deal. It also appears to be a concession to President Donald Trump’s demand that all Israeli hostages be released at once.
As a result of Hamas’s proposals, Israel has reportedly agreed to begin letting in more heavy equipment to clear rubble as well as a limited number of mobile homes and more tents. Israel is also supposed to release approximately 200 women and children it snatched from Gaza since October 7. In total, some 445 Palestinians from Gaza taken prisoner by Israel are slated to be freed Saturday, along with more than 110 Palestinians who are serving life sentences or lengthy prison terms. Additionally, 47 Palestinians who were “re-arrested” after being freed in the 2011 deal for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit are also scheduled to be released.
Netanyahu recently placed his longtime confidant and Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer in charge of the negotiations on Phase 2 of the ceasefire deal, replacing the head of Shin Bet. Netanyahu told cabinet ministers during a recent meeting that Israel’s position on continuing the ceasefire will require Hamas to disarm and have no presence in Gaza. While Hamas has said that it does not want to govern Gaza and would accept a national unity committee, it has dismissed suggestions the movement would disband or disarm as fantasy.
On this episode of Drop Site News’s podcast, Palestinian analyst Abdaljawad Omar, an adjunct professor at Birzeit university and a writer based in Ramallah, joins Jeremy Scahill for a wide-ranging discussion on the state of the ongoing negotiations. They also analyze the recent meetings of a range of Palestinian political parties and factions aimed at creating a national unity committee that could administer the Gaza Strip if the ceasefire holds and reconstruction begins. Omar also discusses President Trump’s threat to attempt to forcibly expel Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to build a U.S.-owned Middle East “Riviera.” Omar was recently a featured guest in a podcast series produced by Mondoweiss and the Palestinian think tank Al-Shabaka, which can be found here.
Image: Palestinian resistance fighters ahead of the handing over the bodies of four Israeli hostages in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza on February 20, 2025. Photo by EYAD BABA/AFP via Getty Images.
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