10/1/2025–|Last updated: 10/1/202503:29 PM (Mecca time)
The Israeli occupation army announced in a statement today, Friday, that it had identified the body of an Israeli prisoner who was being held in the Gaza Strip, days after it was recovered. He said that it belonged to Hamza Al-Zayyadna, whose father, the Israeli soldier Youssef, was found and identified inside a tunnel in Rafah.
The Israeli army said that after completing the diagnosis process at the Forensic Medicine Institute, the Al-Zayyadna family in the Negev was informed of the killing of their son Hamza in Gaza, two days after announcing that his body and that of his father had been found.
The occupation army spokesman, Daniel Hagari, announced last Tuesday that the army forces and the General Security Agency (Shin Bet) were able, during activities over recent days inside the Gaza Strip, to return the body of the Israeli soldier Youssef, along with another body, after they were found inside a tunnel in the Rafah area.
He explained that the body of the two prisoners – who were Arab Bedouins from the Negev – was found near the bodies of armed guards from the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) or from another armed Palestinian group, adding that it appears that they were not killed recently, and it is not yet clear how they were killed.
Al-Aqsa flood
Amidst a stifling Israeli siege on Gaza for 18 years and Israel’s escalation of its violations against Al-Aqsa Mosque, on October 7, 2023, Palestinian resistance factions launched a surprise attack on military sites and settlements adjacent to the Strip, during which they captured dozens of Israelis with the aim of exchanging them for thousands of prisoners who are languishing in Israeli detention centers in unjust conditions. Humanity.
According to Anadolu Agency, the number of Israeli prisoners in Gaza has decreased to 98, as Tel Aviv believes that half of them are not alive.
The day before yesterday, Wednesday, Israeli President Isaac Herzog commented on the occupation army’s announcement that it had recovered the body of Youssef Al-Zayadna, saying via X: “We must continue and do everything for the urgent return of our 99 living sisters and brothers to their families, and the dead to burial in Israel.”
More than once, the prisoner exchange negotiations between Israel and the Hamas movement, which are being conducted with Qatari-Egyptian-American mediation, have faltered due to new conditions proposed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or his retreat from previous understandings, at a time when Israel continues unabated the genocidal war on Gaza.
The opposition and families of Israeli prisoners accuse Netanyahu of obstructing reaching an agreement to maintain his position, as extremist ministers – including Ministers of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich – threaten to leave and topple the government if it accepts ending the war in Gaza.
Since October 7, 2023, Israel, with American support, has been committing genocide in Gaza that left more than 155,000 Palestinian martyrs and wounded – most of them children and women – and more than 11,000 missing, amid massive destruction and famine that killed dozens of children and the elderly, in one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the world. .