Two Coffins, One Crossing: A Fragile Pause Between Grief and Politics
The Red Cross convoy moved like a slow heartbeat through a landscape that has forgotten what calm feels like. Two black coffins — wrapped and sealed, anonymous and yet unbearably specific — were handed over in southern Gaza and placed under international custody as part of a fragile truce that has, for now, reduced bullets to paperwork and the worst kind of bargaining to logistics.
“They told us they were on their way to Israeli and ISA forces,” an Israeli military statement read, clinical and deliberate. But statements never capture the tremor in a neighbour’s voice when they hear the word ‘coffin’ or the way a street that housed laughter now echoes with photo posters of the missing. “We need closure,” said one relative of a hostage, speaking outside a Tel Aviv hospital. “We need to know. Even this — even their bodies — must come home.”
Numbers on a Scale Too Human
The exchange of remains is small arithmetic against an enormous ledger of loss. According to officials relaying the fragile tally, Israel returned 15 Palestinian bodies today — bringing the number handed back to Gaza to 135 — while Hamas has handed over all 20 surviving hostages and the remains of 10 out of 28 known deceased under the current agreement.
Statistics like these are meant to be precise, but they land like stones in the mouths of those who must live with them. “When you’re counting people, every statistic is a family,” said Dr. Leila Haddad, a humanitarian policy specialist based in Amman. “Numbers matter for negotiations, but they never replace the texture of grief.”
The Rafah Bottleneck: Politics at the Border
Border crossings have become more than checkpoints; they are political instruments. Rafah — the only Gaza crossing previously not under Israeli control — remains shuttered since May 2024 when Israel took control of the Gaza side. Cairo had signalled a possible reopening, but Jerusalem was quick to dampen expectations.
“The opening will be considered based on how Hamas fulfills its part — returning the deceased and implementing the framework,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said, tightening the valve on movement yet again. For Gazans, the difference between a crossing that opens and one that stays closed is not abstract: it is medicine arriving or an ambulance idling in the dark; it is a university student missing exams in Cairo or a grandmother unable to see grandchildren who have long lived in Egypt.
Before the war, more than two million people lived squeezed into Gaza’s 365 square kilometres. A functioning Rafah would allow for medical referrals, family reunions and the flow of humanitarian supplies that a battered health system so sorely needs.
On the Ground: The Wastewater, the Rubble, the Human Will
Tom Fletcher, the UN relief coordinator, drove through neighbourhoods that used to be ordinary streets and found “vast wastelands.” He and his team inspected a wastewater treatment plant in Sheikh Radwan where pumps were smashed, and sewage pooled in the wreckage. “This is about dignity,” Fletcher told reporters as he watched residents attempt to dig latrines among the ruins. “We have a 60-day surge plan — a million meals a day, tents for winter, rebuilding health services. But it’s a massive, massive job.”
The UN figures provided to mediators show that 950 trucks crossed into Gaza from Israel on Thursday — a crucial lifeline but barely a bandage over a wound that will take years to heal. Aid agencies continue to press for Rafah to be reopened to speed the flow of food, fuel and medicines. Turkey has reportedly staged search-and-rescue teams at the Egyptian border, waiting for permission to assist in body-recovery efforts.
When Ceasefire Lines Blur: The Bus and the Yellow Line
Even as negotiators tally exchanges and plan aid convoys, violence punctuates the ceasefire’s margins. Gaza’s civil defence agency says nine members of the Abu Shabaan family were killed when, returning to check a home in Zeitun, the bus they were on was hit. The Israeli military says troops fired after a vehicle crossed the so-called “yellow line,” a buffer established in the agreement, claiming that warning shots were ignored and that the vehicle posed an imminent threat.
“We were trying to see if anything was left of our house,” said a neighbour who helped recover bodies. “There was shouting, then silence. It breaks you — how quickly a day can flip from hope to ashes.”
Such incidents underscore how brittle the pause is. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have returned to northern Gaza since the truce, but many now find their homes unrecognisable: streets gone, landmarks buried, neighbourhoods transformed into unmarked fields of rubble.
Faces of the Conflict: Personal Stories and Political Echoes
One of the bodies returned to Israel was identified as Eliyahu Margalit, 75, who was killed during the 7 October 2023 attack that sparked this long war. “He leaves behind a wife, three children, grandchildren,” read an official notice. His daughter, Nili, had been freed earlier under the exchange agreement. “Eliyahu loved gardening,” Nili told a reporter at a memorial. “Even now, all I want is his little hands back, the smell of him, the soil under his nails.”
On the other side of the boundary, Gaza families fold photos into their pockets and carry them like talismans. An informal shrine in a refugee camp held laminated portraits of the missing, strings of plastic beads and small cups of tea. “We hang pictures at the market and at mosques,” said Layla, a volunteer with a local aid group. “People look at them as they buy bread. We need them to remember names.”
What This Means Beyond the Border
There are larger questions that refuse to stay in the realm of statements and tallies. What does dignity mean in a city without running water? How do societies hold memory when nearly every physical marker is destroyed? And for Israelis watching their leaders, what does it mean to demand accountability while the machinery of politics grinds on?
Prime Minister Netanyahu declared he will run in the November 2026 elections, telling a right-wing channel, “Yes, I intend to run — and I expect to win.” It is a reminder that wartime decisions are folded into election cycles, that grief and national security become campaign issues, and that accountability — at home and abroad — is never far from electoral calculus.
“Politics will try to harvest from grief,” said Professor Jonathan Weiss, a political scientist who studies conflict and reconciliation. “But the real work is rebuilding infrastructure, restoring trust, and creating space where families can mourn without being drawn into the machinery of politics.”
Where Do We Go From Here?
As the coffins move, as trucks queue and as negotiators haggle over crossings and crossings of lines, the people of Gaza and Israel live in the margin between temporary relief and enduring settlement. The exchange of bodies is one narrow corridor of closure in a broader maze of loss, displacement and political urgency.
What would true progress look like? It might begin with safe, predictable crossings; with uninterrupted aid pipelines; with a credible, independent inquiry into civilian casualties; and with a commitment to rebuild — not just buildings, but systems that protect health, education and livelihoods. It might also begin with small acts: neighbours sharing tea across a demolished courtyard; families naming their dead, aloud, in public spaces; medics being able to work without fear of a sudden strike.
Can grief be negotiated? Not really. Can dignity be restored? Perhaps, but only if the pause becomes more than a temporary stopgap and becomes a path toward real accountability and reconstruction. In the meantime, two coffins, 950 trucks, and the faces at shrines remind us that the human cost is immediate, the politics unrelenting, and the need for compassion — and concrete action — as urgent as ever.
