Following Hamas’s violation of President Trump’s 20-point Gaza plan, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is ordering the Israel Defense Force to strike targets in the Strip and widen the area Israel controls there, as the cease-fire seems to be at least temporarily suspended. 

“Following security consultations,” Mr. Netanyahu “has directed the military to immediately carry out forceful strikes in the Gaza Strip,” the Israeli prime minister’s office wrote on X Monday. Israel is saying the decision was a reaction to shots being fired at its forces and, more crucially, to Hamas’s failure to deliver bodies of deceased hostages in accordance with the cease-fire agreement.

America has a base at Kiryat Gat, Israel, where 200 troops of the U.S. Central Command are posted to monitor implementation of the cease-fire. As of this writing, the White House has not commented on the violations of the agreements. Mr. Netanyahu, though, reportedly told his cabinet that Israel will avoid taking any steps that Washington could oppose.

An Israeli source tells the Sun that the decision to resume military action might be temporary, as Mr. Trump is intent on moving forward with the plan. The military response, he said, is designed to relay to Hamas the message that foot dragging in implementation of agreements is unacceptable.  

In response to Israel’s resumption of military activity, Hamas canceled what it earlier said was its plan to return to Israel the remains of a hostage’s body on Monday night. On Sunday Hamas returned what it claimed to be the body of one of the remaining 13 Israelis who were killed in its captivity after their abduction on October 7, 2023.

A DNA examination at Israel’s Abu Kabir forensic institute, though, determined that the remains were body parts of a deceased Israeli, Ofer Tsarfati, whose other remains had been found by the IDF early in the war and had already been buried in Israel. Worse: IDF drone footage documented Hamas’s manipulation of the process of digging up bodies that the terror organization claims are difficult to locate. 

The drone footage shows Hamas operatives taking a shrouded object out of a building, and then digging a hole to inter it. The men then summon Red Cross officials to document how they supposedly discover the body, and then dig it up with the aid of a bulldozer before handing it over to the Red Cross officials.

“We’re calling on both parties in this to abide by the commitments they made as part of the cease-fire agreement,” the United Nations spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, told the Sun in response.  The footage is “extremely concerning,” he added. “Human beings need to be respected, and the remains of human beings need to be respected.”

Mr. Trump announced a cease-fire plan on September 29, when it was accepted by Jerusalem. The Israeli cabinet approved it on October 9. According to one of the plan’s first provisions, “within 72 hours of Israel publicly accepting this agreement, all hostages, alive and deceased, will be returned.”

Hamas returned all 20 living hostages according to the agreement, but claimed that it finds it difficult to find some of the bodies of the deceased, and invited foreign bodies to deliver heavy equipment to help dig up remains. Israeli sources say Hamas knows where almost all the bodies are, and is delaying returning them in order to avoid the second part of the plan, which entails disarming the terror group. 

In addition to Monday’s IDF air strikes and ground movement, Israel has decided to also widen the “yellow line,” to which Israel retreated as part of the agreement. That area, where IDF troops remain temporarily until a multilateral  force takes over, consists of more than half of Gaza’s territory.