Israel threatened to resume attacks on Gaza if Hamas does not go through with all the steps outlined in U.S. President Donald Trump’s peace plan.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz ordered the military to prepare for the “complete defeat of Hamas in Gaza” if the militant group, deemed a terrorist organization in the U.S. and the EU, doesn’t disarm and return all the bodies of deceased hostages in its possession.

“If Hamas refuses to uphold the agreement, Israel, in coordination with the U.S., will return to fighting and act to achieve the total defeat of Hamas,” Katz said in a statement.

Trump echoed those remarks, telling reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday: “We want the weapons to be given up, sacrificed. And they’ve agreed to do it.”

“Now they have to do it. And if they don’t do it, we’ll do it,” the U.S. president added.

On their end, Hamas returned all 20 live hostages to Israel on Monday and has sent the remains of seven deceased hostages so far, leaving 21 unaccounted for.

One body brought to Israel was later discovered not to be that of a hostage, the Israeli army said. Hamas announced it will send another two bodies Wednesday night, but its military said that it has released all of the bodies of Israeli hostages that it is able to access, and that “extensive efforts and special equipment” will be needed to locate the remaining bodies.

Israel has already slowed the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza, blaming the militant group’s slow return of Israeli remains for disrupting Trump’s peace agreement. A Palestinian relief agency is already warning the volume and distribution of aid are still insufficient for the struggling population.

About 800 aid trucks entered on Sunday through the Kerem Shalom and Kissufim crossing points on Israel’s border with Gaza, up from the previous daily rate of 300, but still less than required, said Amjad Shawa, the director of the Palestinian NGO Network.

“Gaza needs 1,000 trucks daily, and all six border crossings must open to meet escalating humanitarian needs,” he told Bloomberg News.

There were no aid imports on Monday, when Hamas released the remaining living hostages taken in the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel that triggered the war, nor during Tuesday’s Jewish holiday, Shawa said. Aid vehicles entered Wednesday but it was still too early to know on what scale.

Truce tensions

Despite those tensions, senior U.S. advisers who briefed reporters Wednesday on the next steps for the truce cast the agreement as holding. They said Israel was committed to creating safety for civilians in Gaza and that Hamas had signaled they also intended to honor the deal. The U.S. did not see the truce as having been broken by either Israel or Hamas, an adviser said. The advisers spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity.

Efforts to retrieve the bodies of dead hostages are part of a complex process made more challenging by the level of devastation in Gaza, with unexploded bombs atop rubble and some remains located well below the debris, one of the advisers said. Turkey had offered to help with finding the remains, potentially deploying a search team used in the wake of earthquakes.

While demilitarizing Gaza remained a challenging task, the officials said no rebuilding money would enter areas that were under the control of Hamas and that the ultimate aim was for the militant group to not control any part of the territory.

Approximately one to two dozen U.S. troops are in the Middle East region focused on oversight of the deal, one of the advisers said, emphasizing CENTCOM’s involvement was focused on operational and logistical matters — a military strength — and not boots on the ground in a conventional sense.

The agreement to end the Israel-Hamas war, announced by Trump earlier this month, sought a conclusion to a two-year conflict that has largely destroyed Gaza and triggered a hunger crisis. That was accelerated by an Israeli blockade on humanitarian aid, ostensibly as a means of pressuring Hamas to surrender, and a United Nations-backed monitor declared a famine in parts of the territory in late August.

On Tuesday, the U.N. said Israel threatened in a letter to cut the amount of aid entering Gaza over the slow process handing over hostage remains. Israel hasn’t confirmed or denied that position.

“Withholding aid from civilians is not a bargaining chip,” Tom Fletcher, the U.N.’s Emergency Relief Coordinator and head of the Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said in a statement Wednesday.

The World Food Programme said on Saturday it had begun scaling up operations in Gaza, and had enough food ready for dispatch to feed the 2 million population for three months. For that to happen, it needs “fast, efficient use of all entry points,” the body said.

Despite the fragile truce halting aerial bombings by Israel, violence simmered in parts of Gaza. Hamas gunmen have been battling rival Palestinian factions and, on Sunday, video footage circulated on social media of a public execution of six men the group had accused of espionage and insurrection.

Further stoking tensions, Israeli forces killed seven Gazans, the Hamas-affiliated Palestinian Information Center said. The Israeli army said troops fired on Palestinians who approached their positions after they didn’t heed warnings to turn away.

The U.N. said both Israel and Hamas must do more to ensure the safety of Palestinian civilians.

Hostage bodies

The ceasefire agreement established that all hostages, living and dead, would be released at the outset, in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. Hamas officials have previously warned the logistics involved in retrieving hostages remains were complicated amid the rubble.

Prospects for turning the ceasefire in Gaza into the peace envisaged by Trump depends on factors including the disarming of Hamas, further pullbacks by Israeli troops controlling around 53% of the enclave, and the creation of an interim Palestinian administration and mechanisms for reconstruction.

Hamas has indicated a willingness to cede what remains of its governance, but not its weapons.

_____

(With assistance from Dan Williams, Michelle Jamrisko, Jennifer A. Dlouhy, Lauren Dezenski and Carla Canivete.)

_____

©2025 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.