......chief David Barnea reportedly told families of Israeli hostages on Monday evening that the use of bulldozers to clear wreckage in the Gaza Strip could make it impossible to recover some slain captives’ bodies.
Speaking to the families, Barnea said, “It’s awful. It could cause more cases like Ron Arad,” referring to an Israeli Air Force officer who was captured in Lebanon in 1986 and, in the absence of intelligence about his condition or location, was declared dead in 2008.
“We have a responsibility to bring everyone home,” he added, according to a Channel 12 report Tuesday.
During the meeting, Barnea also reportedly told the families that the list of 33 hostages to be freed in the deal’s first stage was prepared after the end of the hostage-ceasefire deal in November 2023 — despite the fact that circumstances have certainly changed for many of the captives since then.
Those included fell into the “humanitarian” categories of women, children, female soldiers, the elderly, and the sick, the latter of whom was determined by a medical panel.