The spokesperson for ‘Saraya Al-Quds,’ Abu Hamza, stated that ‘the brigade has proven in this battle that the enemy’s prisoners will not return except by a decision from the resistance or in coffins, and they may never return at all.’ He affirmed the commitment of ‘Saraya Al-Quds’ and other resistance factions to all the terms related to the first stage of the ceasefire agreement and the end of the Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip. He called on mediators and guarantors to exert pressure on Israel to force it to fulfill its commitments and stop the ‘repeated criminal violations’ of the agreement.
Benjamin Netanyahu said that ‘in light of the announcement by the Islamic Jihad Movement of finding a detained body, Israel views the delay in its immediate return with great seriousness.’ He continued in a statement that ‘this constitutes a new violation of the ceasefire agreement in Gaza, and Israel demands the immediate return of the bodies of the three dead hostages still held in the Gaza Strip.’
‘Saraya Al-Quds,’ the military wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement, announced last week the discovery of the remains of one of the three remaining Israeli detainees in the Gaza Strip. In a statement, it said, ‘Today we found the body of one of the enemy’s prisoners during a search operation in areas controlled by the army in central Gaza.’
This development comes in the context of an exchange deal that took place as part of the ceasefire agreement in Gaza on October 10th. During this, Palestinian factions released 20 Israeli prisoners alive and the remains of 27 others out of 28, according to what the factions announced. Despite this, the Israeli forces later claimed that one of the remains they received did not belong to any of their prisoners and that another set of remains was not new but belonged to a prisoner previously recovered, in an attempt to question part of the deal’s results, according to the Palestinian Media Center.
The agreement came into effect on October 10th, 2025, and on October 13th, US President Donald Trump, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan signed a declaration to establish the ceasefire in Gaza. Under the agreement, the 20 who remained alive since the events of October 7th, 2023, were released in exchange for Israel releasing approximately 2,000 Palestinian detainees from Gaza, including those sentenced to long terms.
