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Rabat — The Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) announced on Sunday that they had recovered the bodies of three Israeli hostages—Ofra Keidar, Yonatan Samerani, and soldier Shay Levinson—who were held postmortem in Gaza since October 7, 2023.
Western media outlets promptly flooded their coverage with the faces and names of the deceased, accompanied by solemn tributes for the loss of human lives. Missing from their narrative, however, was the fact that Israel killed over 33 Palestinians in the besieged enclave yesterday as well.
Although Israel could have secured the release of its captives repeatedly throughout the last 20 months, it has chosen instead to prolong its genocidal campaign in Gaza and deepen its occupation—while hypocritically maintaining a public posture of seeking peace and the return of hostages.
On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that Israel’s broader conflict with Iran would actually serve its goals in Gaza.
“We are getting closer, step by step, to our objectives: defeating Hamas and bringing our hostages home…I am convinced that the operation in Iran is helping us achieve our objective in Gaza,” he insisted.
Meanwhile, Hamas has consistently affirmed its readiness to release all Israeli hostages in exchange for a permanent ceasefire, a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, and the liberation of all Palestinian prisoners.
Netanyahu has rejected those terms outright, choosing instead to continue a genocide that has already killed more than 56,000 Palestinians—most of them women and children. Tens of thousands more are unaccounted for, buried beneath the endless rubble of homes, hospitals, and shelters obliterated by Israeli bombardment.
Although Israel recently announced a drawdown of occupation forces in Gaza, ostensibly to prepare for broader regional escalation, the killing continues. As international attention shifts toward Israel’s confrontation with Iran, Palestinians in Gaza now face the highest risk of dying simply while searching for food at the Israeli–US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
The GHF began operating in late May, following a three-month total blockade on aid to a population enduring a slow, deliberate genocide for nearly two years. Since its launch, IOF attacks have killed more than 400 Palestinians at or near GHF distribution points, and wounded nearly 2,000.
Human rights groups and Palestinian civilians alike understand that these aid sites function as death traps, but continue to go out of sheer desperation.
After systematically obliterating Gaza’s healthcare system—through relentless bombings, raids, and the targeted killing and abduction of medical staff—Israel has enforced a total blockade on essential medicines. With fuel banned from entering the Strip, even ambulances in Gaza City have ceased to operate. Thousands of wounded Palestinians are now left to suffer and die in silence, denied the most basic means of survival.
Of the 250 Israelis taken captive in October 2023, at least 50 remain in Gaza, with only around 20 believed to be alive. Meanwhile, Israel holds over 10,000 Palestinians in its prisons under systematic torture and well-documented human rights abuses. Among them are approximately 400 children and nearly 4,000 detainees held without charge or trial—branded as “prisoners” for no other crime than belonging to a land that Israel and Western powers decided to own.
