Netanyahu Orders Immediate, Powerful Strikes on Gaza After Hamas Violated Ceasefire, Faked Hostage Recovery

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the IDF to “carry out immediate and powerful strikes in the Gaza Strip,” his office announced Monday evening, following a high-level meeting on Israel’s response to what officials described as repeated and deliberate violations of the Gaza ceasefire.

The directive came shortly after IDF soldiers were attacked in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, marking yet another breach of the truce by Hamas terrorists. The escalation also follows mounting Israeli outrage over Hamas’s handling of murdered hostages’ bodies under the ceasefire agreement.

Earlier in the day, IDF troops stationed in Rafah came under fire from terror operatives, according to The Times of Israel. Soldiers returned fire, and Palestinian media reported subsequent Israeli artillery strikes in the area. The IDF has not yet released an official statement on the incident, which is believed to be a clear violation of the truce by Hamas.

Just last week, two IDF soldiers were killed in the same area. The military blamed Hamas for the deadly attack, though the terror group denied responsibility for its operatives in IDF-controlled zones of Gaza.

Earlier, Hamas’s military wing announced it would return “the body of a hostage that was recovered a short time ago from one of the tunnels in the Gaza Strip.” The statement did not specify the identity of the hostage.

The announcement was met with anger in Israel, where officials have accused Hamas of deliberately stalling the return of abductees’ bodies. The frustration deepened after the terror group returned fragments from a murdered hostage that had already been recovered in December, to the horror of his family, instead of a new person, and following what Israel says was a staged “discovery” of those remains.

Shortly before the announcement, Hamas’ Shehab news agency released footage showing its members near a tunnel entrance in Khan Younis, allegedly searching for hostage bodies.

Later, the IDF published a 15-minute uncut drone video exposing Hamas operatives faking the recovery of a hostage’s remains in Gaza City. The footage showed terrorists preparing and burying remains before summoning Red Cross representatives to stage a false “discovery.”

The IDF identified the remains as belonging to Ofir Tzarfati Hy’d, who was kidnapped and murdered during Hamas’s October 2023 onslaught. His body had already been recovered by the IDF in December of that year.

“Contrary to Hamas’s claims of difficulties locating the bodies of the deceased hostages, yesterday Hamas operatives were documented removing body remains from a structure that had been prepared in advance and burying them nearby,” the IDF said.

“Shortly thereafter, the Hamas terror organization summoned representatives of the Red Cross and staged a false display of discovering a deceased hostage’s body,” it added.

According to the military, the footage “clearly shows that the Hamas terror organization is attempting to create a false impression of efforts to locate the bodies, while in fact holding deceased hostages whose remains it refuses to release as required by the agreement.”

The IDF further noted that Hamas’s excuses about lacking engineering equipment were “clearly unnecessary for the transfer of remains” and therefore did not justify the group’s delays in returning the bodies.