Israel is stonewalling the second phase of a Gaza ceasefire agreement brokered by Egypt and the United States threatening to collapse a fragile truce and reignite war in the besieged enclave, a senior Hamas official told Al Manassa.
The deadlock comes amid urgent diplomatic pressure from Egypt and the US, whose officials are in Tel Aviv attempting to salvage the deal.
Egyptian intelligence chief Hassan Rashad met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as three senior figures from Donald Trump’s camp arrived to push forward the agreement—signed just two weeks ago in Sharm El-Sheikh.
Israel informed mediators from the US, Egypt, and Qatar that it would not move forward with the second round of talks until Hamas delivers the final remains of Israeli captives. This condition was not explicitly required in the initial sequencing of the deal, the source explained to Al Manassa.
The agreement stipulated that negotiations would begin after all captives, living and dead, were returned. But Hamas insists the accord allowed for staged repatriation of remains, citing the near-impossible task of retrieving bodies from under mountains of rubble amid catastrophic shortages in manpower and equipment.
“Hamas committed to returning all remains,” the official reiterated. “A monitoring mechanism was established involving Egypt, Qatar, Turkey, and the Red Cross.” He added that both Hamas and mediators were blindsided by Israel’s sudden refusal to proceed.
Trump had announced the deal, framing it as a breakthrough. Hamas and Israel would release captives and allow aid into Gaza, then begin negotiations on governance and disarming Palestinian resistance.
In a continued implementation of the ceasefire agreement, Israel received the remains of two more captives from the Red Cross in the Gaza Strip late Tuesday. The transfer, which confirmed the return of the bodies of Arie Zalmanowicz and Tamir Adar, raises the total number of deceased captives recovered since the truce began to 15.
Despite repeated commitments to complete the returns, Israel continues to obstruct talks, tying any progress to full recovery of every single corpse. “Even with Hamas reiterating its full commitment, Israeli officials are refusing to move forward,” the Hamas official said.
Mediators from Egypt, Qatar, and the US are now scrambling to convince Israel to honor the sequence of the agreement, offering guarantees from Hamas to accelerate retrieval efforts.
In televised remarks Monday, Hamas negotiator and Gaza leader Khalil Al-Hayya said: “Despite limited resources, we are determined to return all remains and to receive those of our own.” He acknowledged, “We face enormous obstacles recovering bodies, but we’re serious about completing this process.”
On Tuesday, Al-Hayya stated Hamas had received fresh assurances from both the mediators and Trump that the war was over. “The Gaza agreement will hold,” he declared.
Hamas has reportedly privately assured mediators it would halt public executions of collaborator clan members embroiled in violence, following arguments that such acts could hand Israel justification to resume its assault, according to Arab diplomatic sources.
Yet pressure is mounting. Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, along with son-in-law Jared Kushner, met Netanyahu in Tel Aviv. On Tuesday, Vice President J.D. Vance joined the talks in an urgent attempt to prevent the deal from unraveling.
Egypt's Rashad also met Netanyahu to discuss “advancing US President Trump's framework, Israel-Egypt relations and strengthening the peace between the two countries,” according to a statement from Netanyahu’s office on X.
But Washington is increasingly alarmed. The New York Times quoted unnamed US officials saying Netanyahu’s intransigence could sabotage the Gaza ceasefire, which the Trump administration is heavily invested in as a springboard to reignite stalled peace negotiations.
In his latest comments on the conflict, Trump issued a threat against Hamas, saying “we will have no choice but to go in and kill them,” if they failed to comply with the agreement—a warning that further inflames tensions on the ground.
