The Goldin and Shaul families’ demand on Thursday that the prime minister not accept Hamas’ request to remove the bodies of terrorists from the terror tunnel that was bombed by the IDF earlier this week, came out just in time, just before the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) approved the request, according to 0404 News.
The IDF has already planned, with the approval of the political echelon, to allow Hamas to remove the dead terrorists from the tunnel, when Netanyahu received the call from the families of the two fallen soldiers whose bodies have been kept by Hamas for more than three years, stop the move.
COGAT chief, Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, later issued a statement saying, “We will not allow the search for terrorists in the tunnel without progress on the issue of Israeli POWs and MIAs.”
Which means that even at this classical tit for tat juncture, Maj. Gen. Mordechai was still only demanding “progress” on the MIAs and POWs, in return for letting Hamas get their own loved ones for burial.
Mordechai delivered the message to the delegation of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Israel, Jacques de Mayo, following a request of the Red Cross to allow the identification of terrorists missing under the tunnel, apparently only moments before the group was getting the access it was requesting.
What would it take for COGAT to come back to the Israeli side in the conflict?