Israel Confirms Body Returned by Hamas Is Shiri Bibas

Israel and Hamas are nearing the end of the first phase of the six-week truce, which is set to expire in early March. Under the deal, Hamas committed to freeing at least 25 Israeli hostages and the remains of eight more in exchange for more than 1,500 Palestinians jailed by Israel.

Despite pressure from the Trump administration and mediators like Egypt and Qatar, Israel and Hamas have failed to agree on terms to extend the agreement into its second phase. That would entail an end to the war and the release of the roughly 30 remaining living hostages in Gaza in exchange for more Palestinian prisoners.

The six hostages slated for release on Saturday are Hisham al-Sayed; Avera Mengistu; Tal Shoham; Omer Shem Tov; Omer Wenkert; and Eliya Cohen. Four of them were among the 251 people abducted during the Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, the deadliest day in Israeli history. Mr. al-Sayed and Mr. Mengistu have been held captive in Gaza for roughly a decade.

Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are also eagerly awaiting the return of their loved ones. The detainees include 50 serving life sentences for involvement in deadly attacks against Israelis. But there will also be more than 400 people taken prisoner in Gaza, who were generally held without formal charges.

The final swap in the six-week truce is set to take place next weekend, when Hamas is expected to return the bodies of at least four hostages to Israel. After that, the sides will probably enter an uncertain period — without an agreement to end the war or a plan for more swaps to sustain the peace.

Israeli leaders have said they will not countenance anything short of the end of Hamas’s rule and the demilitarization of Gaza as a condition of ending the war. Hamas has shown little appetite to take apart its military wing or send its leaders in Gaza into exile.

The families of hostages — as well as President Trump — have urged Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to cut a deal with Hamas to free the remaining captives. But Mr. Netanyahu also faces pressure from far-right members of his government to resume the military campaign.

Here’s what else to know:

• Misidentified remains: The body that Hamas turned over to the Red Cross on Friday has been confirmed to belong to Shiri Bibis, the Hostage Families Forum said in a statement on Saturday. On Thursday, Hamas returned four bodies that it said belonged to hostages, including Ms. Bibis and her two young children. Israel later said that the remains said to be Ms. Bibas’s were not hers.

Orderly crowds have gathered in the rain, cordoned off by masked gunmen. A stage has been set up for the handover ceremony against a backdrop of half-ruined buildings, the footage shows.

Ms. Bibas’s remains were initially believed to have been repatriated to Israel on Thursday with those of her two children, as part of a negotiated exchange for Palestinian prisoners. With a DNA test, Israeli officials then determined the body was that of another person and not Ms. Bibas’s. The discovery stirred anguish in Israel and put pressure on Hamas to produce the correct remains.

Saturday’s announcements were the latest development in a series of crises that have made up the first phase of a cease-fire with Hamas. So far, 19 living Israeli hostages have been traded for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.

Despite recriminations from both sides, the cease-fire has held for a month. And Hamas’s rapid effort to find and return the body of Ms. Bibas was a sign that it did not want to bear responsibility for endangering the agreement ahead of the next transfer, planned for Saturday.

On Thursday, Hamas said it had handed over the remains of four hostages: Ms. Bibas, who at the time of her capture was 32; her two children, Ariel, then 4, and Kfir Bibas, then 9 months; and Oded Lifshitz, 83. The handoff was staged in front of crowds in Khan Younis, and each casket bore a photo of a hostage.

A forensic institute in Tel Aviv confirmed the identities of the remains of Ariel, Kfir and Mr. Lifshitz.

But early on Friday, Israel said that one of the bodies Hamas handed over was not that of Ms. Bibas. The Israeli military called the finding a “violation of the utmost severity” of the cease-fire. In a statement, Hamas acknowledged the possibility of a mistake or a “mixing up of corpses.” Another body, believed to be Ms. Bibas’s, was handed over to the Red Cross on Friday evening.

On Saturday morning, the forensic institute confirmed the identification of that body as Ms. Bibas’s, according to the Hostage Families Forum.

“Despite our fears about their fate, we continued to hope that we would get to embrace them, and now we are in pain and heartbroken,” the Bibas family wrote in a statement disseminated by the hostage forum. “For 16 months we sought certainty, and now that it’s here, it brings no comfort, though we hope it marks the beginning of closure.”

The family called for the immediate return of the remaining hostages still in captivity. “There is no more important goal. There can be no rehabilitation without them,” the family wrote.

Isabel Kershner contributed reporting.

He had just visited his son in a Tel Aviv-area hospital on a day when Hamas turned over coffins that were said to contain the remains of four of Mr. Dekel-Chen’s neighbors in Kibbutz Nir Oz, where about a quarter of the 400 residents were either killed or taken hostage on Oct. 7, 2023.

It has been 504 days since the Hamas-led attack, and roughly 60 hostages have yet to come home. “We need to double down now on getting all the hostages home,” Mr. Dekel-Chen said. The four bodies returned on Thursday were said to include three members of the Bibas family — Ariel Bibas, 4, and Kfir Bibas, who was just 10 months old, and their mother, Shiri Bibas. The Bibases came to symbolize the plight of the captives after videos of them being taken to Gaza went viral.

But early Friday, the Israeli military announced that the remains in what was said to be Ms. Bibas’s coffin did not match the identity of any of the hostages. “This is a violation of utmost severity,” the military said.

The authorities did confirm the children’s remains, and those of Oded Lifshitz, who was 83 when he was killed in captivity by the militant group Palestinian Islamic Jihad, according to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office.

Mr. Lifshitz, a retired journalist, was captured along with his wife, Yocheved Lifshitz, who was released weeks into the war for what Hamas called “humanitarian and health reasons.”

She has described abuse and harrowing conditions in Hamas’s underground tunnels, warning that other hostages would not be able to endure them.

Before the war, Mr. Lifshitz volunteered to drive Gazans seeking medical treatment to hospitals in Israel and was a founding member of a branch of Peace Now, a group advocating a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Mr. Dekel-Chen, who was friends with Mr. Lifshitz for decades, said he “was a man truly committed to his values.”

Thousands of Israelis paid tribute to Mr. Lifshitz and the other hostages during a Thursday night rally in what has become known as Hostage Square in Tel Aviv. They were also there to pressure the Israeli government to secure the release of those still being held.

Rally speakers demanded that the Netanyahu government not let the cease-fire fall apart. The first phase of the agreement between Israel and Hamas took effect in January and is set to end in less than two weeks. Negotiations on the second phase have been delayed, leaving the fates of dozens of captives up in the air.

The fragile truce has led to the release of hostages from Gaza in exchange for Palestinians held in Israeli jails — but there are concerns among the relatives of hostages that there may not be another round of releases.

Yael Adar, whose son Tamir Adar was killed in the attack on Kibbutz Nir Oz and whose body has not been returned from Gaza, spoke at the Thursday rally. She said that when Tamir’s son heard that bodies would be returned to Israel this week, he asked if his father would be coming home.

“We told him no, not at this stage. Asaf couldn’t understand why there were stages,” she said.

Mr. Netanyahu’s office said has said that six living hostages would be released on Saturday, instead of three as planned, and that four more bodies would be returned next week.

But relatives are anxious.

Hamas’s failure to return Ms. Bibas raises new questions about whether the next release of hostages and prisoners on Saturday will proceed and the fate of talks on the second phase of the cease-fire deal.

If negotiations on the second phase fail, roughly 60 hostages, some believed to be dead, would most likely remain in Gaza. And if fighting resumes, those who are alive will be in even graver danger.

The hostages that have been freed say there is no time to spare.

Keith Siegel’s wife drove that point home during the Monday rally at Hostage Square. Mr. Siegel was held in Gaza for nearly 500 days, six months of which were spent locked in a small room alone. He was beaten, threatened at gunpoint and reduced by his captors to “nothing,” in the words of his wife, Aviva.

He ate only moldy pita bread, lost 65 pounds and some days thought he would not survive, Ms. Siegel said, describing details of her husband’s experience for the first time.

“He went through 484 days of hell no human being should ever have to experience,” said Ms. Siegel, who was also taken hostage. She was released during a brief truce in November 2023. “I was in Gaza. I survived. Keith survived. Others will not,” Ms. Siegel warned.

It was a theme repeated by other former captives, including Iair Horn, 46, who was freed on Saturday along with two other hostages in exchange for 369 Palestinian prisoners.

He appeared in a video message at the Monday rally, recorded about 48 hours after his return to Israel, to plead for his brother, Eitan Horn, who was still in Gaza and was not slated to be freed in the first phase of the agreement.

“I was there. I was in Hamas’s tunnels. I experienced it firsthand,” Iair Horn said. “And I’m telling you, the hostages don’t have time. They must be brought back now.”

Since his return, he said, people kept asking what he needs. “I answer them, ‘I need only one thing: Bring back my brother. Bring back my brother and all the hostages.’”