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SvennoJ on 26 October 2025
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New heavy machinery in Gaza to help retrieve bodies of Israeli captives

Some heavy machinery entered Gaza yesterday, but we’re only talking about six trucks. Gaza’s Civil Defence teams have been appealing for this heavy machinery [to help with recovery efforts] since the first day of the war. At least 9,000 Palestinians are still trapped under the rubble.

The new heavy machinery is going to help retrieve the bodies of Israeli captives.

Palestinians say they know there won’t be any developments in the ceasefire until the bodies of all the Israeli captives are returned. They know that this is the main focus and without this happening, the Rafah crossing won’t open and patients won’t leave the Gaza Strip. So, Palestinians want this process to be fast because they want to see the next phase of this ceasefire. They want reconstruction, they want freedom of movement, and they want to see and feel that the ceasefire is going to make it.

Egyptian vehicles enter Gaza to find captives’ remains

Heavy vehicles belonging to an Egyptian team have entered the Gaza Strip to assist with efforts to recover the remains of Israeli captives still in Gaza. The Times of Israel reported that the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office approved their entry.

Red Cross assists Hamas in search for Israeli bodies in Gaza

Social media footage shows the arrival of Red Cross vehicles after a meeting with Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, to guide them to a location of a body of an Israeli captive in southern Rafah.

An Israeli government spokesperson said the Red Cross and teams from Egypt are being allowed beyond the ceasefire-set “yellow line” – which is allowing Israel to maintain control of 58 percent of the besieged enclave – to search for the remains of abductees.


‘Insurmountable’ destruction forces Israel to allow body search help

It took two weeks of stalling, but in the end, there is a tacit admission by Israel that the amount of destruction two years of bombardment has created is simply insurmountable to the effort to search for the dead captives.

So now there are teams from Egypt helping look for the bodies of Israeli abductees, and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is also helping.

Hamas has given the expected location of the bodies, most of them in Palestinian-controlled areas. But some are beyond that yellow line. That is why we saw a surprising Israeli political approval for ICRC staff and Hamas to enter that area, where the Israeli army is still operating.

This is because of mounting pressure, not just on Hamas from Israel by way of restricting aid entering Gaza, but also on Israel to allow more time for assistance in order to retrieve those bodies and not to use that as an excuse to return to war.