“Bring Them Home—All of Them”: Huckabee Presses Hamas on Remains as Fragile Gaza Truce Teeters

By: Fern Sidman

The ecstatic scenes that unfolded across Israel when the first group of living hostages crossed back into the country this week did not erase a grim ledger that remains stubbornly incomplete. As Israel National News reported on Wednesday, the ceasefire’s humanitarian core was always twofold: to secure the freedom of those still alive and to return, with dignity, the bodies of those murdered in captivity. By midweek, that second obligation had become the focal point of a tense diplomatic standoff.

Into that breach stepped the U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, who gave blunt public voice to a frustration shared by many Israeli families and officials. “As grateful as I am for the 20 living hostages set free by President Trump’s deal, I will not forget that Hamas is still holding remains of several hostages they murdered, including Americans Itay Chen & Omer Neutra. Pray they too come home—NOW!” he wrote on X. Israel National News noted that the ambassador’s statement distilled a sentiment echoing through Hostages Square and the corridors of power alike: celebration cannot eclipse the unfinished duty to the dead.

Under the terms of the truce described in the Israel National News report, Hamas was to transfer all bodies of deceased hostages by Monday afternoon—the same day the 20 living captives were freed. Instead, only a portion arrived. As of Monday, 28 sets of remains were still believed to be held within Gaza. By midweek, Hamas had handed over nine bodies, according to Israeli officials cited in the Israel National News report. In an episode that compounded anguish with confusion, one of the bodies initially presented as a hostage was, upon examination, found to be a Gazan civilian—a misidentification that Israeli sources said underscored the opacity of conditions inside the Strip and the need for verifiable, coordinated recovery efforts.

Late Wednesday, Hamas transferred two additional bodies, while simultaneously asserting that it held no further remains. “We met our end of the agreement, we released all the living hostages, and what we have as far as deceased hostages,” the group claimed in a statement reported by Israel National News. “Regarding the rest, we will need great efforts and special tools to find them.”

That phrasing—“great efforts and special tools”—landed with a thud in Jerusalem. Israeli officials told mediators that the group’s assertion was unacceptable as an endpoint and, as the Israel National News report detailed, pressed Hamas to intensify searches in tunnels, safe houses, medical facilities, and other concealment sites. The Israeli position is stark: unless the pace and scope of remains recovery markedly improve, progress on the ceasefire’s next phases cannot continue.

The brinkmanship was not theoretical. Axios reported that a potential breakdown in the accord was narrowly avoided after Hamas returned five bodies over two days, bringing the verified total to nine. In response, Israel postponed a planned reduction in aid shipments into Gaza and kept the Egypt–Gaza border crossing open—concessions calibrated to preserve the fragile equilibrium while signaling that tangible compliance would be met with tangible relief. The Israel National News report, citing Israeli officials, described the sequence as a “pressure–response cycle” that could repeat in the days ahead if the remains dossier stagnates again.

For Washington, the risk is strategic as well as moral. The United States invested considerable political capital to construct a sequencing framework that married security, humanitarian access, and hostages—for both the living and the deceased. As the Israel National News report indicated, the return of bodies is not a ceremonial footnote but a pillar of the deal’s legitimacy. If that pillar buckles, the entire edifice could wobble.

Israel National News has chronicled the names and stories behind the cold arithmetic. Among the missing are two American citizens, Itay Chen and Omer Neutra, whose families have waited in excruciating limbo for definitive closure. Huckabee’s public appeal—unusual in its directness for a sitting ambassador—centered them explicitly, reflecting both an American duty to its nationals and a broader insistence on dignified repatriation for all the dead.

In Jewish law and tradition, the imperative to recover and bury the deceased is profound. Israeli society, shaped by that ethos and by decades of conflict in which soldiers’ remains have been used as bargaining chips, views the duty as sacrosanct. Families of the dead told Israel National News that every day of delay is “a second murder,” stealing the basic human rites owed to their loved ones. This language, raw and unsparing, illuminates why the remains provision is non-negotiable in Jerusalem—and why Huckabee’s call resonated.

Hamas’s assertion that it no longer possesses additional remains is, at best, only part of the story. Israeli officials have little doubt that bodies may be scattered across an archipelago of sites: collapsed tunnels, field burials, private apartments appropriated by militants, makeshift morgues. Israel National News has reported that terror factions routinely compartmentalize sensitive assets—hostages, weapons, documents—precisely to complicate any post-facto accounting. Even if the political bureau can no longer point to a single central “custodian,” Israel argues, the group controls the territorial networks and armed cadres necessary to find and retrieve the dead.

That is why Israeli negotiators have been unequivocal: Hamas must task its commanders, mobilize local assets, and cooperate under third-party supervision to exhaust every lead. Anything less, they say, amounts to evasion—and jeopardizes the next steps of a ceasefire that Israel National News reminds readers is conditional, sequenced, and revocable if benchmarks are missed.

For mediators—Qatar, Egypt, the United States—the remains impasse is both a diplomatic test and a humanitarian imperative. The Israel National News report outlined how the mediating states have acted as transmission belts for messages, guarantees, and verification protocols, often improvising solutions to practical obstacles (secure corridors for recovery teams, deconfliction windows, and chain-of-custody procedures). The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), already tasked with escorting living hostages and prisoners, is a logical partner for remains transfer, but its access and security depend on sustained consent from the armed actors on the ground.

As the Axios report noted and the Israel National News report amplified, the recent handover of five bodies quelled a nascent crisis—but it also set a precedent: compliance averts punitive steps; non-compliance triggers them. If that formula holds, the mediators will likely press for a daily cadence of returns—however incremental—to maintain momentum and keep aid corridors open.

No one in Jerusalem mistakes patience for passivity. Israel National News reported that senior Israeli officials have delivered a dual message: the government is committed to the ceasefire’s architecture so long as Hamas meets its obligations, and equally committed to resuming operations—in concert with U.S. coordination—if the group backslides. That message is intended for multiple audiences: Hamas commanders calculating leverage; mediators seeking predictability; Israeli families balancing hope and grief; and international partners watching whether this truce can be a bridge to something more durable.

Huckabee’s intervention sits squarely in that political theater of urgency. By tying the moral necessity of dignified burial to the diplomatic necessity of follow-through, the ambassador effectively warned that the ceasefire’s legitimacy in American eyes—like in Israel’s—hinges on completing the list, name by name, family by family. The Israel National News report  portrayed this as a test not just of Hamas’s willingness, but of the mediators’ ability to extract verifiable performance under time pressure.

Where, then, does the process go from here?

Verification and Mapping. Israeli and international teams will push for granular information—coordinates, tunnel maps, field-grave locations—while insisting on third-party verification for every claimed transfer. Israel National News has reported that misidentified remains (like the Gazan civilian handed over earlier) have sharpened Israel’s insistence on rigorous chain-of-custody standards.

Sequenced Incentives. Expect continued use of “pressure–response” levers: calibrated aid flows, crossing access, and de-escalation windows in exchange for steady returns. Axios’s account of a near-breakdown averted by five returned bodies will likely become the template.

Public Accounting. Israeli authorities, acutely aware of public trust, will provide regular, sober updates—names confirmed, families notified, forensics completed—while urging restraint on social media to protect families’ privacy. Israel National News has repeatedly echoed the IDF’s call for reliance on official information rather than rumor.

American Advocacy. Statements such as Huckabee’s suggest the U.S. will keep the remains file at the forefront of its engagement—both as a moral obligation to American families and as a barometer of Hamas’s good faith. Israel National News has underscored how Washington’s voice, when coupled with tangible diplomatic levers, can move the needle.

A test of credibility. For Hamas, fulfilling the remains clause is the minimum ante for any claim to responsible stewardship in Gaza’s future. Failure would strengthen voices in Israel—prominent in Israel National News commentary—that argue only sustained pressure, not accommodation, compels compliance.

In Hebrew, the phrase kavod ha-met—honor due to the dead—conveys both the duty and the solace of burial. Israel National News has given ample space to families who say that, even now, they do not speak of “closure,” a word that feels too neat for trauma that will span generations. What they ask for is simpler, older, and non-negotiable: to bring their loved ones home, to say Kaddish with certainty, to mark a grave that is more than a photograph on a wall.

That is why Huckabee’s post struck a nerve. It affirmed that the diplomatic scoreboard is incomplete until the last family can perform the oldest human rite. It reminded all parties that a ceasefire’s credibility is measured not only in quiet borders and open crossings, but in finished lists and named graves.

Israel National News has chronicled the war’s cost with relentless detail: the day of slaughter that began it, the long hostage winter that followed, the ceaseless negotiations, the jubilant first reunions. The remains now in dispute are the final ledger entries of that story’s most harrowing chapter. They must be found. They must be returned. Only then can this fragile truce claim the moral ground it seeks—and only then will Huckabee’s invocation, “Pray they too come home—NOW!”, be answered with the only reply that matters: a name, a coffin, a family’s embrace, and a nation’s vow kept.