Cousin of murdered Israeli hostage scolds 'betrayal' of peace accord - 'There needs to be repercussions'

Marking the landmark day with GB News host Martin Daubney, Mr Ma'anit expressed disbelief at finally witnessing the hostages' return after two years of relentless campaigning since their capture on 7 October.

He said: "I still can't believe it. It's been two years. We've been fighting vociferously, the hostages, since they were taken on October 7. We've been shouting from the rooftops, dreaming of this day.

"And to finally see it happen, and especially in one go, rather than the drip drab drops of the previous staged releases that Hamas sadistically ran last time they did the release of hostages, no fanfare, just a quick, speedy transfer of all of the 20 remaining alive hostages, is the best possible outcome we could have hoped for them."

However, he acknowledged the ongoing anguish for families still awaiting their loved ones' remains.

Mr Ma'anit acknowledged that Hamas had previously indicated difficulties in locating all the bodies, claiming they needed to search through debris.

He said: "Obviously, there's still the issue of the dead and they were supposed to have released all 28 dead hostages today. We didn't see that so, worrying time for those families.

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"We have to have some kind of leverage to secure the remaining hostages to be released. I don't have any better solutions, do you?"

Mr Ma'anit emphasised the religious significance of retrieving remains, explaining that Jewish tradition requires burial in Israeli soil as quickly as possible. Beyond spiritual considerations, he stressed families' need to know their relatives' bodies are secure and undisturbed.

He explained: "Look, we knew that they were signalling in advance that they weren't going to have all of the hostages’ bodies. They were pretending that it was a really difficult prospect, that they had to find them, that they had to search to rubble. And so we made allowances for the possibility that maybe a few of the hostages wouldn't be returned on this on this day.

“But for four bodies out of the 28 to be returned is a betrayal of the agreement and there needs to be some repercussions.

"Everyone's going to have different views about it, but in Judaism, the remains are very sacred. They need to be buried, ideally in Eretz Israel, in the soil of their homeland as soon as humanly possible, so there's a kind of religious and spiritual element to it."

Mr Ma'anit shared the devastating personal impact of the hostage crisis on his family, recounting how his cousin Tsachi Idan witnessed his eighteen-year-old daughter Maayan's murder on 7 October.

He told GB News: "With my cousin Tsachi, we buried him next to his firstborn daughter, Maayan, who was murdered on October 7. She was just 18 years old. She had just celebrated her 18th birthday only four days earlier.

"The terrorists came in, they murdered her, he had to watch her die. Then he was taken hostage, held in captivity, and murdered in captivity.

"So reuniting them actually was a deeply moving, horrific and sorrowful day for us, but nevertheless a beginning of some semblance of closure for our family and the beginning of a grieving process."