Palestinian militant group Hamas yesterday handed over three Israeli hostages, whose gaunt appearance shocked Israelis, while Israel began freeing dozens of Palestinians in the latest stage of a ceasefire deal aimed at ending the 15-month war in Gaza.
Ohad Ben Ami and Eli Sharabi, both taken hostage from Kibbutz Be’eri during the cross-border Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, and Or Levy, abducted that day from the Nova music festival, were led onto a Hamas podium by gunmen.
The three men all appeared thin, weak and pale, and in worse condition than the 18 hostages who had previously been freed under the truce agreed last month.
Photo: AFP
“He looked like a skeleton, it was awful to see,” Ohad Ben Ami’s mother-in-law, Michal Cohen, told Channel 13 News as she watched the Hamas-directed handover ceremony, which included the hostages answering questions posed by a masked man as militants armed with automatic rifles stood on each side.
In another show of force by Hamas, which has paraded fighters during previous releases, dozens of its militants deployed in central Gaza as it handed hostages over to the International Committee of the Red Cross. They were then driven in Red Cross vehicles to Israeli forces.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the sight of the frail hostages forced into an apparent staged interview by Hamas militants was shocking and would be addressed.
Photo: AFP
Israeli President Isaac Herzog described the release ceremony as cynical and vicious.
“This is what a crime against humanity looks like,” he said.
In exchange for the hostages’ release, Israel is freeing 183 Palestinian prisoners, some convicted of involvement in attacks that killed dozens of people, as well as 111 detained in Gaza during the war.
In Ramallah, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, a bus carrying 42 freed Palestinian prisoners was welcomed by a cheering crowd. Some waved Palestinian flags and others chanted “Allahu akbar” or “God is the most great.”
Among the Palestinian prisoners freed yesterday was Eyad Abu Shkaidem, sentenced to 18 life terms in Israel for masterminding suicide attacks in revenge for Israel’s 2004 assassinations of former Hamas chiefs Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi.
For families of the Israeli hostages who have been held incommunicado in Gaza for more than a year, the wait has been a rollercoaster of dread and hope as the moments of reunion drew near.
The Hostage Families Forum compared the images of the three hostages to survivors of Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust.
“These images evoke the horrifying pictures from the liberation of the camps in 1945, the darkest chapter of our history. We have to get all the hostages out of hell,” the forum said.
Some hostages face a painful return. Sharabi’s two teenage daughters and his British-born wife were slain in the Hamas attack on Kibbutz Be’eri, where one in 10 residents was killed.
The exchange is the latest in a series of swaps that have so far returned 13 Israeli and five Thai hostages abducted during the Hamas attack and released 583 Palestinian prisoners and detainees.
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