Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the Israeli military to conduct strikes in Gaza on Tuesday as the government accused Hamas of violating the cease-fire agreement by firing on Israeli forces and failing to return the bodies of dead hostages.
The decision “to immediately carry out forceful strikes in the Gaza Strip” was announced in a statement by Mr. Netanyahu’s office. It later said the prime minister had made the decision with the Israeli military, and then informed President Trump “before the action was taken.”
Israeli and Arab media reported strikes in Gaza but they were not confirmed by the Israeli military.
A spokesman for Mr. Netanyahu, David Mencer, said Tuesday night that “Hamas have violated the framework by not returning hostages and attacking our forces.”
Hamas denied involvement in the attack on Israeli forces. In a statement, it said it remained committed to the cease-fire agreement, and accused Israel of violating it.
An Israeli military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive deliberations, said Hamas had attacked Israeli forces in Rafah, in southern Gaza. The official also accused Hamas of pretending not to know where the remains of Israelis abducted during the Oct. 7, 2023, attack could be found.
Hamas has insisted that it is working in good faith to recover the bodies.
Since the cease-fire began earlier this month, Israel and Hamas have both expressed their desire to stick to the truce, despite tensions and repeated flare-ups of violence. Last week, Israel struck sites across Gaza in response to clashes that killed two Israeli soldiers, but each side said afterward that it remained committed to the cease-fire.
Israel has accused Hamas of delaying the return of hostage bodies, a key plank of the cease-fire deal that Israeli officials had expected to happen more quickly than it has. Hamas has said it cannot work faster because of conditions on the ground in Gaza, which has been devastated by two years of war.
Earlier on Tuesday, the Israeli military released a drone video that it said showed members of Hamas staging the discovery of a body among rubble in Gaza.
In the video, three men can be seen carrying what resembles a white body bag from inside a damaged building and placing it in a pit. They then use shovels to bury the bag with dirt and place large rocks over it, covering it up entirely.
Then an excavator arrives and digs up the same spot, unearthing the white bag and carrying it to a mound of dirt nearby. Three Red Cross representatives arrive to examine the white bag as the excavator covers it with dirt, before the bag is unearthed again.
Another man appears to take photographs or videos of the white bag with his phone before the drone footage ends.
The New York Times confirmed that the video was filmed in the Tuffah neighborhood of Gaza City. A local photographer in Gaza took pictures of the same three Red Cross representatives in Tuffah on Monday as an excavator was digging in the ground nearby.
A spokeswoman for the Red Cross did not respond to messages seeking comment on Tuesday.
The Israeli military said the video showed that Hamas was trying “to create a false impression” of its efforts to locate the bodies, and that it was not abiding by the cease-fire deal in good faith.
Shosh Bedrosian, a spokeswoman for the prime minister’s office, said at a press briefing on Tuesday that the video showed a body bag containing the remains of Ofir Tzarfati, 27, who was killed in captivity.
The video depicted the staged recovery of his partial remains, she said, which were handed back to Israel on Monday. Some of his remains had been recovered by Israel on two previous occasions earlier in the war.
“I can confirm to you today that Hamas dug a hole in the ground yesterday, placed the partial remains of Ofir inside of it, covered it back up with dirt, and handed it over to the Red Cross,” she told reporters.
In response to the video, Hamas referred the Times to a statement from earlier in the day in which it accused Israel of “seeking to fabricate false pretexts in preparation for taking new aggressive steps against our people, in blatant violation of the cease-fire agreement.”
The militant group did not immediately respond to Israel’s order for new strikes.
Johnatan Reiss and Abu Bakr Bashir contributed reporting.
Liam Stack is a Times reporter who covers the culture and politics of the New York City region.
Aric Toler is a reporter on the Visual Investigations team at The Times who uses emerging techniques of discovery to analyze open source information.
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