Ceasefire shaky as Palestinians killed, aid halted
Hamas has handed over the bodies of more deceased hostages after Israel threatened to reduce aid into Gaza and US President Donald Trump threatened violence against the Palestinian militant group if it does not disarm.
Cracks have begun to appear in the historic Gaza peace deal as both sides accuse each other of breaching phase one of the agreement already.
But Israel said on Wednesday it was restricting deliveries of aid into the Gaza strip because Hamas was being too slow to turn over the bodies of dead Israeli hostages.
Aid delivery trucks would be halved from 600 to 300 and Israel would not open the crucial Rafah border crossing with Egypt, Israel said.
According to the ceasefire agreement, Hamas must hand over a total of 28 bodies.
Hamas said locating the Israeli bodies was difficult. Four coffins were handed over on Tuesday (AEDT). Shortly after 8am Australian time, the Israel Defence Forces confirmed four more coffins had been delivered.
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Hamas has said there are difficulties in locating the remains in the rubble after two years of war in the Gaza Strip.
On Tuesday, Hamas said Israel was killing people in Gaza and violating the ceasefire. Trump suggested Hamas was reneging on its promise to return the dead, and threatened the group with violence.
“If they don’t disarm, we will disarm them,” Trump told reporters in Washington after returning from his weekend trip to the Middle East. “And it will happen quickly and perhaps violently.”
Meanwhile, Israeli drone fire killed five people as they went to check on houses in a suburb east of Gaza City and an air strike killed one person and injured another near Khan Younis, Gazan health authorities said.
The Israeli military said it had fired on people who crossed truce lines and approached its forces after ignoring calls to turn back.
Hamas has also been executing men in the street and swiftly reclaiming territory in the Gaza Strip’s urban areas following the partial withdrawal of Israeli troops last week.
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In a video circulated late on Monday, Hamas fighters dragged seven men with hands tied behind their backs into a Gaza City square, forced them to their knees and shot them from behind as dozens of onlookers watched from nearby shopfronts.
A Hamas source confirmed that the video was filmed on Monday and that Hamas fighters participated in the executions.
Reuters was able to confirm the location by visible geographic features.
Trump has given his blessing to Hamas to reassert some control of the strip, at least temporarily.
Israeli officials, who say any final settlement must permanently disarm Hamas, have so far refrained from commenting publicly on the re-emergence of the group’s fighters.
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On Monday the US president proclaimed the “historic dawn of a new Middle East” to Israel’s parliament as Israel and Hamas were exchanging the last 20 living Israeli hostages in the Gaza Strip for nearly 2000 Palestinian detainees and prisoners.
While Israeli officials had understood there could be some delay in the recovery effort, the families of hostages and their supporters expressed dismay that only four bodies were returned on Monday.
The Hostages Family Forum, a grassroots organisation representing many of the hostage families, called it a “blatant violation of the agreement by Hamas”.
-with AAP/AP
