The Latest: Gaza ceasefire holds as questions loom over next steps in US plan
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3:42 AM on Tuesday, October 14
By The Associated Press
After the release of the last living hostages and Palestinian prisoners and detainees, the tenuous ceasefire in Gaza was holding Tuesday while questions remain over other key parts of a U.S. plan for the region.
The long list of uncertainties includes when Hamas will return to Israel the bodies of the 24 hostages believed to be dead in Gaza, and Israel’s insistence that a weakened Hamas disarm. The future governance of Gaza is also unclear.
Gaza's Health Ministry said Tuesday that the bodies of three people killed by the Israeli military in the northern part of the territory were taken to Al Ahli hospital. The Israeli military said troops there had “opened fire to remove the threat” of several people approaching them and not complying with orders to stop. It didn’t immediately comment on any casualties. The ceasefire agreement calls for Israeli forces to pull back to where they were in August, before launching their latest offensive.
Here’s the latest:
The Israeli military identified two of the dead hostages returned from Gaza on Monday — Guy Illouz from Israel and Bipin Joshi, a student from Nepal.
Both were in their 20s when Hamas-led militants took them during the Oct. 7, 2023, attack that ignited the war. Illouz was abducted from a music festival and Joshi from a bomb shelter.
Israel said Illouz died of his wounds while being held captive without proper medical treatment, while Joshi was killed in captivity in the first months of the war.
The ceasefire plan introduced by U.S. President Donald Trump called for “all hostages, alive and deceased” to be returned within 72 hours of the agreement’s acceptance. But it also provided a mechanism if that didn’t happen, saying Hamas should share information about any remaining deceased hostages and “exert maximum effort to ensure the fulfillment of these commitments as soon as possible.” The agreement signed last week also said Israel would provide information on the remains of Palestinians who died in Israeli custody.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty told The Associated Press ahead of Monday’s summit said that 15 Palestinian technocrats have been selected to administer postwar Gaza. He said their names were already vetted by Israel, without disclosing them.
“We need to deploy them to take care of the daily life of the people in Gaza, and the Board of Peace should support and supervise the flow of finance and money, which will come for the reconstruction of Gaza,” he said, referring to a board that would govern Gaza and be chaired by U.S. President Donald Trump.
Abdelatty said the 15-member committee had already been approved by all Palestinian factions, including Hamas.
He said Hamas members welcomed Trump’s plan. They “have no role in the transitional period. They are committed to that. That is why they are working on an administrative Palestinian committee to be deployed in order to take care of the daily life of the people of Gaza,” Abdelatty said.
For its part, Israel has to comply with a withdrawal from Gaza, allowing a flow of aid the deployment of the administrative committee on the ground to ensure security for civilians, Abdelatty said. Hamas also must honor its commitments, he said.
Egypt announced that it would host a reconstruction and recovery conference for Gaza with the help of the U.S. and Germany.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said Tuesday those responsible for the destruction in Gaza should he held accountable in spite of the fragile ceasefire reached between Hamas and Israel.
Sánchez said there should be no impunity for “the main actors in the genocide that has been perpetrated in Gaza,” without naming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or others in his government.
“Peace cannot mean forgetting, there can be no impunity. There are cases open now in the International Criminal Court,” Sánchez told Spanish radio station Cadena SER, in an apparent reference to the arrest warrants issued by the world’s top war-crimes court against Netanyahu and his former defense minister over Israel’s military offensive in Gaza.
Spain was one of Europe’s sharpest critics of Israel’s two-year war in Gaza with Sánchez last month calling Israel’s actions there a genocide.
The International Committee of the Red Cross is cautioning that finding and returning the remains of former hostages in Gaza is “an even bigger challenge” than freeing those who were still alive.
Christian Cardon, an ICRC official, detailed how the remains of four deceased hostages were returned to Israel on Monday, the same day the last remaining 20 living hostages were released and nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees handed over to the humanitarian agency.
“The search for human remains, it’s obviously (an) even bigger challenge than having — I would say — the people alive being released,” he said at a U.N. news briefing in Geneva.
“There will be human remains handed over from both sides” in the future, and ICRC will again have a role in the “very sensitive operation,” Cardon said, adding that he wasn’t able to say how soon that might happen. He said the search for remains would be a “massive challenge,” citing unexploded ordnance and the difficulty of identifying bodies.
The release of nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees offers a rare glimpse into the immediate health impacts of incarceration in Israel.
Some of the those released on Monday are suffering from a range of health problems they developed during years in Israeli detention, doctors and freed prisoners in the occupied West Bank told The Associated Press.
“I was beaten on the shoulder, causing it to tear. For eight months, I wasn’t given even a pill for the pain,” said Kamal Abu Shanab, 51, who was released after more than 18 years behind bars. A military court in 2007 convicted him of “military training, voluntary manslaughter and membership in an unrecognized organization,” according to Israel’s list of exchanged prisoners.
The Palestine Medical Complex in Ramallah received 14 men released on Monday as part of the exchange and discharged all but two. Doctors examining the men said their conditions suggested they had been beaten.
“It indicates that these patients were subjected to severe beatings, reflecting the extent of the violence they endured,” said Imed al-Shami, a resident doctor at the hospital’s emergency room.
The AP could not independently verify the claims. The Israel Prison Service said it was unaware of such claims. “All inmates are held according to legal procedures, and their rights including access to medical care and adequate living conditions are upheld,” it said in a statement on Tuesday.
Israel says it adheres to its prison standards under law and investigates any reports of violations. But such allegations are consistent with findings previously documented by media organizations and human rights groups.
The U.N. development agency says the amount of rubble in Gaza would stack 12 meters (about 40 feet) high in all of New York’s Central Park or be enough to build 13 giant pyramids in Giza in Egypt.
Jaco Cillers, special representative of UNDP administrator for a program to help Palestinians, says the latest joint estimate from the U.N., the European Union and the World Bank is that $70 billion will be required to rebuild Gaza. That figure was tallied in September, and up from $53 billion estimated in February.
“The estimated damage and rubble, throughout the whole of Gaza is in the region of 55 million tons,” he said. “Another way to put it, apart from the example from Central Park that I mentioned, is (that it’s) also equal to 13 pyramids in Giza.”
“That is the amount and size of the challenge,” Cillers told a U.N. press briefing in Geneva by video from Jerusalem.
He said $20 billion would be needed in the next three years, and the rest would be needed over a longer period – possibly decades.
Cillers pointed to “good indications” from potential donors such as those in the Arab world, Europe and the United States, without specifying.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan stressed that an agreement signed in Egypt is not a peace deal but rather a framework for a ceasefire and said the United States and other nations must exert pressure on Israel to ensure its compliance.
Speaking to journalists on his return from the ceremony in the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh late on Monday, the Turkish leader insisted that the only viable solution is a two-state solution recognizing Palestinian statehood.
“Turkey is determined to continue working toward this goal,” he said, according to a transcript of his comments were made available on Tuesday.
Erdogan said United States and others should ensure that Israel complies with agreement, citing what he said was the country’s alleged poor track record on honoring ceasefires.
Erdogan would not say whether Turkish troops would be deployed to Gaza, saying discussions about the structure and role of a task force for the region were still continuing. He said, however, that his government was focused on reconstruction and providing humanitarian support, including the possibility of sending container homes to Gaza.
