Updates: Israel receives two more captives’ bodies from Gaza

For more on the Israeli military killing a Palestinian family in Gaza City, see our story here.

We also have this explainer on the torture and abuse of Palestinians in Israeli detention.

And for all our coverage of Israel-Palestine, check out our page here.

We will soon be closing this live page. Here’s a look at the day’s key developments:

• Hamas has returned two more Israeli captives’ bodies to Israel as protesters rallied in Tel Aviv to demand the government secure the return of all the remains from Gaza.
• Benjamin Netanyahu’s office says the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt will remain closed “until further notice” as the Israeli prime minister accuses Hamas of not doing enough to retrieve the captives’ bodies.
• Hamas says Netanyahu is using “flimsy pretexts to disrupt” the ceasefire deal.
• Gaza’s Government Media Office says the Israeli army has committed 47 violations of the truce agreement since it came into force in early October, killing 38 Palestinians and wounding 143 others.
• An Israeli attack that killed 11 members of a single family east of Gaza City, including seven children, has drawn widespread condemnation, with a Palestinian official calling it “part of Israel’s ongoing policy of killing and destruction”.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, says it has enough food supplies to feed Gaza for three months, but they are stuck in warehouses in Jordan and Egypt due to continued Israeli restrictions on deliveries to the Strip.

“We must be allowed to get all this aid into Gaza without delay,” UNRWA said, adding that it also has shelter supplies for as many as 1.3 million people.

UNRWA has enough food in warehouses in Jordan and Egypt to supply the entire population of #Gaza for three months.

And enough shelter supplies to reach up to 1.3 million people.

We must be allowed to get all this aid into Gaza without delay.

This is what people need. pic.twitter.com/VNLjaD9d5P

— UNRWA (@UNRWA) October 18, 2025

On Al Jazeera’s Upfront, labour organiser and activist Chris Smalls, who cofounded Amazon’s first labour union in the United States, says he believes workers worldwide should stand with Palestine.

Does grassroots organising have the power to hold governments and corporations accountable for genocide? And where does the US labour movement stand today?

“If our dock workers did the same as our brothers and sisters overseas, we wouldn’t see a genocide,” Smalls says.

Watch the episode of Upfront below:

Rawhi Fattouh, the president of the Palestinian National Council, the Palestine Liberation Organization’s legislative body, has urged the international community to deploy international forces in Gaza to protect Palestinians.

Fattouh denounced the recent deadly Israeli attack in Gaza City that killed 11 members of a single family as “part of Israel’s ongoing policy of killing and destruction”.

“This crime is not an isolated act but part of a continuous pattern of killing and destruction amid clear international inaction to hold the perpetrators accountable,” Fattouh said.

He said the Israeli government is “fully responsible for this war crime against humanity” and called on the international community to “take immediate measures to deploy international forces to provide protection to the Palestinian people”.

Al Jazeera is reporting from Jordan because it has been banned from Israel and the occupied West Bank.

The US vice president, JD Vance, along with the envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, are reportedly travelling to Israel on Monday to discuss the implementation of the second part of the deal.

However, the Israelis say they’re not going to discuss anything related to Trump’s 20-point plan until all of the bodies of Israeli captives are brought back from Gaza.

It’s worth mentioning that Hamas has said they’re trying to do what they can, but this needs assistance on the ground in the form of heavy machinery, much of which has been destroyed during Israel’s war on Gaza, and search teams to help excavate these remains of the captives.

Much of Gaza, of course, lies in rubble and ruins.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has called on US President Trump to exert pressure on Israel to abide by the Gaza ceasefire agreement as it condemned yesterday’s deadly Israeli attack on a Palestinian family in Gaza City.

“The Trump administration must demand that Netanyahu stop using American taxpayer dollars and American weapons to sabotage the ceasefire agreement that America brokered so that he can restart the genocide in Gaza,” CAIR said in a statement.

The group also urged the US State Department and the UN to investigate “horrific signs of torture and extrajudicial killing” on the bodies of slain Palestinian prisoners that were returned to Gaza over the past days.

“Torturing people to death after kidnapping them and holding them without charge is another example of not only international law, but also US law related to foreign aid recipients,” CAIR said.

The US has provided Israel with billions of dollars in military aid throughout the country’s war on Gaza. While US law prohibits military assistance to foreign militaries engaged in gross violations of human rights, Trump and his predecessor, Joe Biden, have refused to apply those rules to Israel.

The Palestinian group says the Israeli prime minister’s decision to refuse to open the Rafah crossing “constitutes a blatant violation” of the ceasefire agreement and a “denial” of the commitments he made with the mediators.

In a statement, Hamas said the continued closure of the crossing, including preventing those who are wounded from leaving, the entry of machinery and specialised teams to find captive bodies would lead to “delays in the retrieval and return of bodies”.

“The war criminal Netanyahu continues to fabricate flimsy pretexts to disrupt the agreement and evade his obligations,” Hamas said.

“We call on the mediators and guarantors of the agreement to take urgent action to pressure the occupation to open the Rafah crossing immediately, oblige it to abide by all the terms of the agreement, and stop its ongoing crimes against our Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip,” the Palestinian group added.

Israeli forces have stormed the West Bank city of Tubas with a large number of military vehicles that came from the Dotan checkpoint near Jenin, after an explosive was fired, which injured two soldiers.

The Wafa news agency reported that large Israeli military reinforcements were also stationed at the Tayasir checkpoint east of Tubas.

Earlier, the Israeli military said soldiers were conducting “operational activity” in Tubas.

Hamas had agreed to return all of the Israeli captives – both the living and the dead – within 72 hours of signing the ceasefire deal. It’s been more than a week, and 18 bodies have yet to be handed over.

The group is calling for heavy machinery to retrieve the remains and has accused Israel of purposely hampering the search, while Israel insists Hamas is dragging its feet. All the while, the lives of Palestinians in Gaza depend on the return of Israel’s dead.

So, will Israel resume the war? And is the US prepared to give it the green light? We ask the experts, in the latest episode of Al Jazeera’s Inside Story, below:

Hamas spokesperson in Gaza, Hazem Qassem, says the Palestinian group does not wish to join any administrative role within the governance of the enclave.

In a statement, Qassem said that Hamas agreed to form a “community support committee” to take over governing Gaza.

“We call for the rapid formation of the Community Support Committee until the formation of the Gaza Management Committee. Government agencies in Gaza continue to perform their duties, as the vacuum is very dangerous,” Qassem said.

“Government agencies will continue to perform their duties until an administrative committee is formed and agreed upon by all Palestinian factions. Discussions are under way with mediators to arrange for the second phase of negotiations,” he added.

Moreover, Qassem said the second stage of the ceasefire deal was “complex” and steps had begun to form a national consensus over essential points.

Al Jazeera is reporting from Jordan because it has been banned in Israel and the occupied West Bank.

There’s a Turkish rescue team on the other side of the Rafah border crossing that specialises in disasters and recovery efforts.

It’s around an 80-person team that’s waiting on the other side of the border for Israeli authorisation to go in and assist with exhuming the bodies of deceased hostages.

But Benjamin Netanyahu says the Rafah border crossing is not going to open even though it’s part of the deal until each body of a captive is returned.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has said Israeli troops will be “strictly enforcing” the demarcation line in Gaza to which they withdrew as part of the ceasefire deal, in order to prevent anyone from approaching or crossing it.

Without mentioning a specific incident, Katz’s comment comes just hours after Israeli forces killed 11 members of a single family – including seven children – in an attack east of Gaza City. Gaza’s Civil Defence said the family had crossed the yellow line in their vehicle when they were fired upon.

As we’ve been reporting, the yellow line is not clearly marked on the ground in Gaza and many Palestinians are not aware of where Israeli troops are positioned, leaving them vulnerable to being attacked.

In his post on social media, Katz also said Israel’s “security policy” in Gaza still includes disarming Hamas, securing the return of all captives’ bodies, and strictly overseeing all crossings, among other things.

Israeli settlers assaulted one man and his wife south of Hebron in the occupied West Bank.

Local activist Osama Makhmara told the Wafa news agency that the settlers, who came from the illegal settlement of Susiya, attacked farmers from the Nawajaa family, beating them severely.

The attack wounded Nabeel Nawajaa and his wife Rihan, who was later transferred to Yatta Governmental Hospital for treatment.

The settlers also vandalised property in the area, breaking several trees and cutting fences surrounding Palestinian farmland.

Since September, the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission has found that Israeli forces and settlers have carried out 2,215 violations across the occupied West Bank, with 1,725 by the army and 490 by settlers.

The most attacks took place in Hebron with 463 incidents, followed by Ramallah and el-Bireh with 417 and Nablus with 309.