US Vice President JD Vance on Tuesday acknowledged the challenges in repatriating the bodies of all the slain Israeli hostages. Vance, who is visiting Israel, said the process of returning all the hostage bodies would take time.
“It is a focus of everybody here to get those bodies back home to their families so they can have a proper burial,” Vance said. “Now, that said, this is difficult. This is not going to happen overnight.”
‘Going to take a bit more time’
Vance noted that some of those hostages are “buried under thousands of pounds of rubble” or their locations are unknown.
“That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work to get them, and that doesn’t mean we don’t have confidence that we will,” he said. “It’s just a reason to counsel in favor of a little bit of patience. This is going to take a little bit of time.”
Hamas handed over 13 bodies
As of Monday, Hamas has returned the remains of 13 deceased hostages. The militants are expected to return the remains of two more hostages by Tuesday night.
According to the US-brokered Gaza deal, Hamas had to release all the hostages, both living and dead, within 72 hours of Israel ratifying the agreement. The militant group, which returned all the living hostages, has since said that they are unable to locate the remains of some of the deceased.
Israel has also transferred a total of 165 bodies of Palestinians to authorities in Gaza as part of the deal.
Gaza ceasefire better than expected: Vance
Vance, who visited Israel two days after the US-brokered ceasefire deal nearly broke down, however, expressed confidence that the truce will remain in place.
“We are one week into [US] President [Donald] Trump’s historic peace plan in the Middle East, and things are going, frankly, better than I expected that they were,” Vance said.
US Envoy Steve Witkoff added that “we are exceeding where we thought we would be at this time.”
Civilian Military Cooperation Center in Israel
Vance also announced the opening of a Civilian Military Cooperation Center in Israel, in which Israelis and Americans will work together to try to provide aid and rebuild the Gaza Strip.
“You have Israelis and Americans working hand in hand to try to begin the plan to rebuild Gaza, to implement a long-term peace, and to actually ensure that you have security forces on the ground in Gaza not composed of Americans who can keep the peace over the long term,” he said.
No US boots on the ground in Gaza
On Monday, President Donald Trump made it clear that US troops won’t be on the ground in Gaza. On Tuesday, Vance reiterated Trump’s position, saying that “we’re in the phase now where we’re actually starting to conceptualize what that international security force would look like” for the territory.
Aid flow increases in Gaza
Meanwhile, the flow of aid to Gaza has started to scale up. The World Food Program said it had sent more than 530 trucks into Gaza in the past 10 days, enough to feed nearly half a million people for two weeks.
That’s still well under the 500 to 600 that entered daily before the war. The WFP also said it had reinstated 26 distribution points and hopes to scale up to its previous 145 points across Gaza as soon as possible.
