THE NEW YORK TIMES: Netanyahu orders strikes on Gaza, as Israel says Hamas violated ceasefire

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the Israeli military to conduct strikes in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, local time, as the government accused Hamas of violating the ceasefire agreement by firing on Israeli forces and failing to return the bodies of dead hostages.

The decision “to immediately carry out forceful strikes in the Gaza Strip” was announced in a statement by Mr Netanyahu’s office. It later said the Prime Minister had made the decision with the Israeli military, and then informed President Donald Trump “before the action was taken.”

Israeli and Arab media reported strikes in Gaza, explosions could be seen over the enclave’s skyline, and Gaza’s civil defence said several people had been killed. But the Israeli military did not confirm that it had carried out any attacks.

A spokesperson for Mr Netanyahu, David Mencer, said Tuesday night that “Hamas have violated the framework by not returning hostages and attacking our forces.”

Hamas denied involvement in an attack on Israeli forces. In a statement, it said it remained committed to the ceasefire agreement, and accused Israel of violating it.

Hamas has insisted that it is working in good faith to recover the bodies.

Since the ceasefire began earlier this month, Israel and Hamas have both said they want to stick to the truce, despite tensions and repeated flare-ups of violence.

Last week, Israel struck sites across Gaza in response to clashes that killed two Israeli soldiers, but each side said afterwards that it remained committed to the ceasefire.

Speaking on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, Vice President JD Vance said “the ceasefire is holding,” despite what he called “little skirmishes here and there.”

“We expect the Israelis are going to respond” when fired upon, he said. “But I think the President’s peace is going to hold despite that.”

Israel has accused Hamas of delaying the return of the bodies of hostages, a key plank of the ceasefire deal that Israeli officials had expected to happen more quickly. Hamas has said it cannot work faster because of conditions on the ground in Gaza, which has been devastated by two years of war.

Earlier Tuesday, the Israeli military released a drone video that it said showed members of Hamas staging the discovery of a body amid the ruins.

In the video, three men can be seen carrying what resembles a white body bag from inside a damaged building and placing it in a pit. They then use shovels to bury the bag with dirt and place large rocks over it, covering it entirely.

Then an excavator arrives and digs up the same spot, unearthing the white bag and carrying it to a mound of dirt nearby. Three Red Cross representatives arrive to examine the white bag as the excavator covers it with dirt, before the bag is unearthed again.

Another man appears to take photographs or videos of the white bag with his phone before the drone footage ends.

The New York Times confirmed that the video was filmed in the Tuffah neighborhood of Gaza City. A local photographer in Gaza took pictures of the same three Red Cross representatives in Tuffah on Monday as an excavator was digging nearby.

In a statement, the Red Cross said its employees at the site Monday “were not aware that a deceased person had been placed there prior to their arrival, as seen in the footage.”

“Our team only observed what appeared to be the recovery of remains without prior knowledge of the circumstances leading up to it,” the organization said. “It is unacceptable that a fake recovery was staged, when so much depends on this agreement being upheld and when so many families are still anxiously awaiting news of their loved ones.”

The Israeli military said the video showed that Hamas was trying “to create a false impression” of its efforts to locate the bodies, when it was not abiding by the ceasefire deal in good faith.

Shosh Bedrosian, a spokesperson for the Prime Minister’s office, said at a press briefing Tuesday that the video showed a body bag containing the remains of Ofir Tzarfati, 27, who was killed in captivity.

The video depicted the staged recovery of his partial remains, she said, which were handed back to Israel on Monday. Some of his remains had been recovered by Israel on two previous occasions earlier in the war.

“I can confirm to you today that Hamas dug a hole in the ground yesterday, placed the partial remains of Ofir inside of it, covered it back up with dirt, and handed it over to the Red Cross,” she told reporters.

In response to the video, Hamas referred the Times to a statement from earlier in the day in which it accused Israel of “seeking to fabricate false pretexts in preparation for taking new aggressive steps against our people, in blatant violation of the ceasefire agreement.”

The militant group did not immediately respond to Israel’s order for new strikes.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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