By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Alexander Cornwell
CAIRO/TEL AVIV (Reuters) -Israel said on Thursday it was preparing for the reopening of Gaza’s Rafah crossing with Egypt to let Palestinians in and out, but set no date as it traded blame with Hamas over violations of a U.S.-mediated ceasefire.
A dispute over the return of hostages’ bodies held by Hamas threatens to derail the truce and other unresolved elements of the plan, including disarmament of militants and Gaza’s future governance.
Israeli government spokesperson Shosh Bedrosian told reporters Israel remained committed to the agreement and continued to uphold its obligations, demanding Hamas return the bodies of the 19 deceased hostages it had not handed over.
The Islamist faction has handed over 10 bodies but Israel said one was not that of a hostage. The militant group says it has handed over all bodies it could recover.
The armed wing of Hamas said the handover of more bodies in Gaza, reduced to vast tracts of rubble by the war, would require the admission of heavy machinery and excavating equipment into the Israel-blockaded Palestinian enclave.
On Thursday, a senior Hamas official accused Israel of flouting the ceasefire by killing at least 24 people in shootings since Friday, and said a list of such violations was handed over to mediators.
“The occupying state is working day and night to undermine the agreement through its violations on the ground,” he said.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond. It has previously said some Palestinians have ignored warnings not to approach Israeli ceasefire positions and troops “opened fire to remove the threat”.
Later on Thursday, local health authorities said an Israeli airstrike in Khan Younis in southern Gaza killed two people. The Israeli military said its forces fired at several individuals who emerged from a tunnel shaft and approached troops, describing them as posing an immediate threat.
Israel has said the next phase of the 20-point plan to end the war, a blueprint engineered by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration, calls for Hamas to relinquish its weapons and cede power, which it has so far refused to do.
Hamas has instead launched a security crackdown in urban areas vacated by Israeli forces, demonstrating its power through public executions and clashes with local armed clans.
Twenty remaining living hostages were freed on Monday in exchange for thousands of Palestinians jailed in Israel.
The Gaza health ministry said on Thursday Israel had released 30 bodies of Palestinians killed during the conflict, taking the number of bodies it has received since Monday to 120.
Longer-term elements of Trump’s plan, including the make-up of an international “stabilization force” for the densely populated territory and moves towards creating a Palestinian state – rejected by Israel – have yet to be hashed out.
Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa said on Thursday the Western-backed Palestinian Authority (PA) would work with international institutions and partners to address Gaza’s security, logistical, financial and governance challenges.
An upcoming conference in Egypt on Gaza’s reconstruction would need to clarify how donor funds are organised, who would receive them and how they would be disbursed, he told reporters.
Hamas ejected the PA from Gaza in a brief civil war in 2007.
MASSIVE INCREASE IN AID NEEDED
In a statement on Thursday, Israel’s military aid agency COGAT said coordination was under way with Egypt to set a date for reopening the Rafah crossing for movement of people after completing the necessary preparations.
COGAT said the Rafah crossing would not open for aid as this was not stipulated by the truce deal at any stage, rather all humanitarian goods bound for Gaza would pass through Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom after undergoing security inspections.
Italian news agency ANSA quoted Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar as saying Rafah will probably be reopened on Sunday.
With famine conditions present in parts of Gaza, U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Tom Fletcher told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday that thousands of aid vehicles would now have to enter Gaza weekly to ease the crisis.
Aid trucks rolled into Gaza on Wednesday and Israel said 600 had been approved to go in under the truce pact. Fletcher called that a “good base” but nowhere near enough, with medical care also scarce and most of the 2.2 million population homeless.
On Thursday UNICEF said that in recent days it brought in 250 pallets of supplies including family tents, winter clothes, tarpaulins, sanitary pads and hygiene kits. It has also distributed more than 56,000 packs of baby food to help 12,500 children for two weeks, UNICEF spokesperson Tess Ingram said.
Ismail Al-Thawabta, head of the Hamas-run Gaza media office, said the aid that had entered since the fighting subsided was a “drop in the ocean”.
“The region urgently requires a large, continuous and organised inflow of aid, fuel, cooking gas, and relief and medical supplies,” he told Reuters.
Much of the heavily urbanised enclave has been rendered a wasteland by Israeli bombardments and airstrikes that have killed nearly 68,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities.
The war was triggered by Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel in which some 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage back to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.
(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Cairo, Alexander Cornwell and Steven Scheer in Jerusalem, Tala Ramadan in Dubai; editing by Mark Heinrich and Hugh Lawson)
