Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that there will be no military withdrawal from Gaza or the release of thousands of jailed militants, two key demands of Hamas in ongoing indirect ceasefire talks.
During an event in the occupied West Bank, he once again vowed that the war will not end without “absolute victory” over Hamas. “We will not end this war without achieving all of our goals,” he said. “We will not pull out the Israeli military from the Gaza Strip and we will not release thousands of terrorists.”
Dozens of unidentified Palestinians were laid to rest at a mass burial in Gaza on Tuesday after Israeli authorities handed over bodies they had been holding in Israel.
Many onlookers covered their noses with masks as about 100 bodies were placed in graves in the southern city of Rafah before bulldozers piled sand on them.
Palestinian officials said the bodies included victims of the Israel-Hamas war and corpses that had been dug up as Israeli forces pushed through Gaza. Israel did not comment on the handover or on the assertion that some corpses had been dug up.