Updates: Hamas hands over body of Israeli captive; Israel kills two in Gaza

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Read more on how the arrest of ex-Israeli army lawyer Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi over a leaked video of Israeli soldiers abusing a Palestinian detainee has shifted focus to the leak, not the abuse, here.

For a feature on how a youth artist from Gaza processes her trauma and grief by painting, read this.

Hamas has returned the remains of another deceased Israeli captive, as it continues to face challenges digging through enormous amounts of rubble without adequate equipment. Read more here.

We will be closing this live page soon. Here is a recap of today’s main events:

• Israel has confirmed that the body of a deceased Israeli captive has been received via the Red Cross.
• Two Palestinian men have been killed in separate Israeli attacks in central Gaza, the army said, claiming the men crossed the ceasefire’s “yellow line”.
• The Israeli army has also launched raids and intensive artillery shelling while carrying out demolitions in southern Gaza.
• In the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces raided several towns, sparking confrontations with residents and detaining at least three people, while settlers assaulted residents in Hebron’s Masafer Yatta.
• The water crisis in Gaza has reached a “catastrophic level”, municipality spokesperson Hosni Mhanna said, with the central desalination plant completely out of action and with only 17 out of 88 wells still operational.
• An Israeli strike on southern Lebanon killed one person and injured another, Lebanese authorities reported.

Israel’s military says it has killed a Hamas fighter who it claims was responsible for holding six Israelis captive in Gaza.

In a post on X, the Israeli military said it had “eliminated” Zaid Zaki Abd al-Hadi Aql, in a strike it said was carried out in response to Hamas’s violations of the ceasefire agreement.

Israeli media said the strike was conducted on October 29.

The Israeli military claimed the killed Hamas fighter was responsible for the captivity of Israelis Bar Kuperstein, Ohad Ben Ami, Maxim Herkin, Elkana Bohbot, Segev Kalfon and Yosef-Haim Ohana, who were abducted into Gaza during the October 7 attacks. The six captives have all been released.

One of the captives, Kalfon, told Israeli newspaper The Jerusalem Post that the captives had been held in a pit in Aql’s house.

The revelation last week by Israel’s top military lawyer, Major-General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, that she leaked the footage of a gang rape of a Palestinian detainee at the Sde Teiman military detention centre in 2024 has shaken the country’s political and media establishment.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – whose leadership of the genocidal war on Gaza has drawn global condemnation – called the leak “perhaps the most severe public relations attack that the State of Israel has experienced”. Critics of Netanyahu’s view come from establishment voices desperate to defend the judiciary and state institutions, which they believe Netanyahu and his allies are exploiting the leak to undermine.

Lost amid headlines fuelled by the leak’s admission is the gang rape of the Palestinian prisoner at Sde Teiman on July 5, 2024. The attack was so brutal that the man was admitted to hospital with what the Israeli daily Haaretz revealed was a ruptured bowel, severe anal and lung injuries, and broken ribs – injuries that later required surgery.

“It’s a huge story in Israel, but you won’t see the word ‘rape’ anywhere in it,” Orly Noy, editor of the Hebrew language Local Call, told Al Jazeera. “The contextualisation of the story is entirely different here than anything you or I might see.”

Read more here.

The United States will share its draft resolution on Trump’s peace plan for Gaza with the 10 elected members of the UN Security Council later on Wednesday, Reuters is reporting, citing a US official.

The official said that diplomats from Egypt, Qatar, Turkiye, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates would join the US in sharing the plan, in a sign of “clear regional support”, the agency reported.

Trump’s 20-point Gaza peace plan calls, among other things, for the creation of a temporary International Stabilization Force (ISF) in the enclave, the makeup and powers of which have been a subject of contention.

Israel has already said it will not accept Turkiye, a key Gaza ceasefire mediator, having any role on the ground.

A draft of the resolution seen by Reuters on Tuesday would authorise the ISF to “use all necessary measures” to carry out its mandate, an enforcement role analysts have suggested many of the Arab and Muslim countries likely to make up the force may be unwilling to perform.

Under the terms of the ceasefire agreement, Israel will hand over 15 of the estimated hundreds of dead Palestinians from Gaza it holds, Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh reports.

It is not known what will happen to the rest of them, she said.

As we reported earlier, officials at Gaza’s Health Ministry say the bodies of Palestinians returned by Israel have been so badly decomposed that teams are struggling to identify them.

This latest body was retrieved after four full days of digging, of excavating in the Shujayea neighbourhood – a neighbourhood that has been under the control of the Israeli military for months.

Yet it took assistance from an expert Egyptian team and coordination with the Red Cross for Hamas to be able to locate and exhume this body.

This is the fourth body of a captive retrieved from that area. After this return, there will be six bodies of captives left in Gaza, including the remains of two foreign nationals, as well as the body of Hadar Goldin, who was killed in 2014.

His name has been the focus of a lot of attention in Israel, because it is estimated that it might be very difficult to locate and return his remains.

That’s significant because Israel insists it will not deliver on its commitments under phase one of the ceasefire agreement, and ease the restrictions on the crossings and so forth, until all the bodies are returned.

A Palestinian man was shot and wounded by Israeli forces in the town of ar-Ram, north of occupied East Jerusalem, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent (PRCS).

The PRCS said the man was shot in the leg with live ammunition and transferred to hospital for treatment.

Local sources, cited by the Wafa news agency, said Israeli forces had chased a group of workers near the illegal separation wall and opened fire, injuring one of them.

According to the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions, 15 Palestinian workers have been killed by Israeli forces since the beginning of the year, while hundreds have been arrested and mistreated by Israeli police in recent months for allegedly lacking permits.

Since October 2023, the union has documented 42 worker deaths and more than 32,000 detentions, Wafa said.

Let’s bring you up to speed with the most significant developments:

• Hamas’s Qassam Brigades have handed over another body of an Israeli captive, the 22nd of 28 to be returned under the ceasefire deal.
• Israel’s Ministry of Construction and Housing has published two tenders this week for the construction of 356 new housing units in an illegal settlement southeast of the Palestinian city of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.
• Israeli forces have raided several towns across the West Bank, sparking confrontations with residents and detaining at least three people.
• The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has said nearly all residents of the Gaza Strip have been displaced, adding that approximately 81 percent of all structures have been damaged.
• The Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate has said at least two Palestinian media workers were killed and 10 others injured in October as attacks on the press across the occupied Palestinian territory continue.

Bodies of Palestinians returned to Gaza by Israel under the ceasefire agreement earlier today were so badly decomposed they were difficult to identify, an official at Gaza’s Health Ministry has told Al Jazeera.

The ministry official, head of the committee for the management of returned bodies, said one of the returned bodies was missing a head.

Health officials say efforts to identify the remains have also been hindered because Israel is not allowing DNA testing equipment into the Gaza Strip.

Clashes have erupted between Palestinians and Israeli forces in multiple locations in the occupied West Bank, our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic are reporting.

A local source said clashes had broken out in the town of Tuqu, southeast of Bethlehem, with Israeli forces firing tear gas at the Palestinians.

As we reported earlier, clashes have also broken out during a raid in Beit Furik, east of Nablus, where Israeli forces fired stun grenades and tear gas.

Confrontations were also reported when Israeli forces stormed the town of Nilin, west of Ramallah.

When the ceasefire agreement came into force last month, Palestinians who had been displaced by the fighting were eager to return to their homes.

But many, like Gaza City resident Zuhair al-Jadba, came home to find their homes damaged or destroyed, the city in ruins.

“We’re living in a difficult situation, extremely difficult,” said al-Jadba, whose home was partially destroyed by Israeli attacks. “Many people came to their homes [in Gaza City] and then went back to the south again.”

He said the dire conditions meant many families remained separated, even after the ceasefire.

“Half of our children are here, half of our children are in the south,” he said. “Because they can’t find housing, or water, or electricity, or anything.”