Netanyahu orders strikes on Gaza, as Israel says Hamas violated ceasefire

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel speaks to reporters while visiting the Capitol in Washington on July 8, 2025. (Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times)

By LIAM STACK, ARIC TOLER and ARIJETA LAJKA

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the Israeli military to conduct strikes in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday as the government accused Hamas of violating the ceasefire agreement by firing on Israeli forces and failing to return the bodies of dead hostages.

The decision “to immediately carry out forceful strikes in the Gaza Strip” was announced in a statement by Netanyahu’s office. It later said the prime minister had made the decision with the Israeli military and then informed President Donald Trump “before the action was taken.”

Israeli and Arab media reported strikes in Gaza, but they were not confirmed by the Israeli military.

A spokesperson for Netanyahu, David Mencer, said Tuesday night that “Hamas have violated the framework by not returning hostages and attacking our forces.”

Hamas denied involvement in the attack on Israeli forces. In a statement, it said it remained committed to the ceasefire agreement and accused Israel of violating it.

An Israeli military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive deliberations, said Hamas had attacked Israeli forces in Rafah, in southern Gaza. The official also accused Hamas of pretending not to know where the remains of Israelis abducted during the Oct. 7, 2023, attack could be found.

Hamas has insisted that it is working in good faith to recover the bodies.

Since the ceasefire began earlier this month, Israel and Hamas have both expressed their desire to stick to the truce, despite tensions and repeated flare-ups of violence. Last week, Israel struck sites across Gaza in response to clashes that killed two Israeli soldiers, but each side said afterward that it remained committed to the ceasefire.

Israel has accused Hamas of delaying the return of the bodies of hostages, a key plank of the ceasefire deal that Israeli officials had expected to happen more quickly than it has. Hamas has said it cannot work faster because of conditions on the ground in Gaza, which has been devastated by two years of war.

Earlier Tuesday, the Israeli military released a drone video that it said showed members of Hamas staging the discovery of a body among rubble in Gaza.

In the video, three men can be seen carrying what resembles a white body bag from inside a damaged building and placing it in a pit. They then use shovels to bury the bag with dirt and place large rocks over it, covering it up entirely.

Then an excavator arrives and digs up the same spot, unearthing the white bag and carrying it to a mound of dirt nearby. Three Red Cross representatives arrive to examine the white bag as the excavator covers it with dirt, before the bag is unearthed again.

Another man appears to take photographs or videos of the white bag with his phone before the drone footage ends.

The New York Times confirmed that the video was filmed in the Tuffah neighborhood of Gaza City. A local photographer in Gaza took pictures of the same three Red Cross representatives in Tuffah on Monday as an excavator was digging in the ground nearby.

A spokesperson for the Red Cross did not respond to messages seeking comment Tuesday.

The Israeli military said the video showed that Hamas was trying “to create a false impression” of its efforts to locate the bodies and that it was not abiding by the ceasefire deal in good faith.

Shosh Bedrosian, a spokesperson for the prime minister’s office, said at a press briefing Tuesday that the video showed a body bag containing the remains of Ofir Tzarfati, 27, who was killed in captivity.