Israel recovers bodies of five hostages amid delay in latest talks on deal

The bodies recovered were those of Maya Goren, 56, a civilian, and four soldiers: Oren Goldin, Tomer Ahimas, Kiril Brodski and Ravid Aryeh Katz, according to the IDF statement.

News about the recovery of the bodies emerged around the time Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was addressing Congress and describing his efforts to free the hostages. In his speech, he promised their families that he “will not rest until all their loved ones are home,” as protests against him continued outside the U.S. Capitol.

In Israel, families of hostages reacted negatively to the news that the negotiating team’s expected trip to Qatar on Thursday has been delayed until next week. The families demanded their own meeting with the team.

“For two weeks, the Prime Minister has refrained from responding to the mediators’ inquiries regarding the implementation of the deal,” said the Hostages Families Forum Headquarters in a statement Thursday morning. “It has now become apparent that the information provided to the hostages’ families did not accurately reflect the situation’s reality.”

The group accused Netanyahu and the negotiating team of “a deliberate sabotage of the chance to bring our loved ones back,” and it demanded to know who was obstructing the hostage deal and why.

While Netanyahu’s speech received numerous standing ovations from lawmakers who attended, much of the reaction in the Israeli press was critical and contrasted the address with the discovery of the hostages’ corpses.

“While Netanyahu was speaking in Congress, the IDF was working to identify the bodies of dead hostages,” columnist Nahum Barnea wrote in the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper. “One world in Washington, another world in Israel.”

The daily Maariv quoted Einav Zangauker, whose son Matan is being held hostage, as saying that Netanyahu was delaying the deal “for personal reasons.”

“Even if we receive news of more hostages dying in tunnels, he will continue with his public relations campaign in the United States and will continue to drag his feet,” she said.

A Netanyahu ally, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, hit back at the media for what he called its overly negative portrayal of the prime minister’s “impressive” speech and accused commentators of trying to weaken the country.

“The bitter band of sourpusses in [the media] has illustrated once again the enormity of its disconnect from Israeli experience and is doing everything to ruin the celebration,” he wrote on Facebook.

Goren, whose body was taken from Kibbutz Nir Oz, was confirmed dead in December, according to a statement from the office of Israel’s prime minister. Around a quarter of residents of the kibbutz were reported killed or missing after the attack, and about half of the houses were destroyed.

Talks to release hostages and end the war in Gaza have been stalled for months, with each side blaming the other for the lack of progress.

At the core of the deadlock is the issue of how the war in Gaza will end. Hamas has demanded that the release of hostages be followed by the withdrawal of Israeli forces and a permanent cease-fire. Netanyahu has vowed to completely destroy Hamas.

In its response to Netanyahu’s speech in front of Congress, Hamas accused him of obstructing negotiations.

“He is the one who thwarted all efforts,” the group said, blasting Netanyahu’s claim that efforts to reach an agreement have intensified and calling it “a complete lie.”

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid also criticized Netanyahu’s speech to Congress, calling it a “disgrace” for not addressing the hostage deal.

“An hour of talking without saying one sentence: “There will be a hostage deal,” Lapid said on social media.

Russian President Vladimir Putin met Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the Kremlin on Thursday. “Considering all the events that are taking place in the world as a whole and in the Eurasian region today, our meeting today seems very important to discuss all the details of the development of these events,” Assad told Putin through a Russian interpreter.

Many Palestinian families are continually forced to seek new places of refuge inside the Gaza Strip, where there is no safe place, the U.N. agency for Palestinians refugees said Thursday morning. “Children are crying and screaming. Everybody is in this horrible position once again. It keeps happening over and over and over,” said Louise Wateridge, a spokeswoman for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency in Gaza. “They are forced from place to place, promised safety where there is none.”

At least 39,175 people have been killed and 90,403 injured in Gaza since the war started, the Gaza Health Ministry said Wednesday. It does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says the majority of the dead are women and children. Israel estimates that about 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, including more than 300 soldiers, and it says 326 soldiers have been killed since the start of its military operations in Gaza.