On October 26th, 2025 the 'Israeli' regime agreed to allow excavation machinery into the occupied Gaza strip to search for the remaining 12 bodies of 'israelis' abducted from occupied Palestine on October 7th 2023. While Hamas authorities, negotiators and even israelis have admitted that some of the 'missing' bodies will never be found, the Zionist regime is claiming that Hamas is hiding them, and so preventing the ceasefire plan from progressing to the next stage - as has undoubtedly been their intention in agreeing to the ceasefire plan. Meanwhile, for each dead israeli 'hostage' delivered back to 'israel', the regime has delivered fifteen more bodies of Palestinians to Gaza, without any identification, and unrecognisable from decomposition or dismemberment. Most may be presumed to have been killed in israeli detention, either by serious mistreatment - lack of food or medicine - or by torture or execution. No demands are made of the regime to provide identification of these bodies, so that some surviving relatives in Gaza may have the 'closure' that is so valued by Jews, Muslims and Christians alike. Knowing this, it has been a policy of the israeli occupation to keep the bodies of Palestinians abducted from the West Bank or killed in detention, for years, merely to torment their relatives and mothers. And in a final twist of the israeli knife, families who finally receive the corpses of their sons and brothers and fathers are forbidden from celebrating or holding public funerals - at pain of further abductions. Below is a report from October 26th in Gaza, as Al Jazeera's Hind Khoudary went to point where bodies of Palestinians had just been returned by the regime, and describes the terrible smell that no video can ever transmit. Only minimal interest is shown by Western media in this part of the 'ceasefire deal', and no interest whatsoever in following up on the ample evidence for criminal killings in israeli jails, nor for the thousands of others now seeing no prospect of release from these hell-holes.
The evening and day following this body-swap, 'Israel' announced that it had 'authorised' some heavy equipment to be brought into the now unoccupied West of the strip by Egypt, to search for the remaining bodies of hostages. Many Palestinians would see these machines not as rescuers - as they were not there to dig for any of the buried Palestinians - but as destroyers; a point nicely illustrated at the end of the video above by film of one such machine destroying a Palestinian home in East Jerusalem. (also in the leading photo).
Twenty four hours later it became clear why the excavator was digging a huge pit 'searching for bodies', as the digger broke through and opened the entrance to the tunnel system, where teams of men accompanied Hamas members into the tunnels and emerged later carrying a white plastic body bag. Excavations also took place in Nuseirat refugee camp, which now finds itself beyond the 'yellow line' in the 'kill zone'. In order for the IOF to locate one body, 'israel' had to allow some Hamas personnel into the area as guides; in the photo below they can be seen watching the operation.
That evening Nuseirat camp was one of the sites hit with lethal airstrikes after 'Israel' broke the ceasefire, killing over 100 Palestinians including 25 children across the strip. Western media reported that "the fragile ceasefire was further tested", as if dropping tonnes of explosives on heavily populated civilian populations was a 'test'. Of course it IS a test, and the governments and media who failed to immediately condemn and sanction israel for violently shattering the long-negotiated ceasefire have failed it unambiguously. Many barely even reported the break, and noted that 'israel' returned to the ceasefire after breaking it. UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese was interviewed by AL Jazeera just minutes before the bombing started, when there seemed still a slight chance that the US President might intervene. She has very harsh words for the Zionist state as well as for all the regime's collaborators and facilitators. Her interview follows this post.
DM 29th October 2025