Hamas frees three Israeli hostages, Israel begins releasing Palestinians
On Saturday, the Palestinian militant group Hamas released three Israeli hostages, whose emaciated appearance shocked Israelis. Meanwhile, Israel began releasing dozens of Palestinians as part of the latest stage of a ceasefire agreement aimed at ending the 15-month conflict in Gaza.
Ohad Ben Ami and Eli Sharabi, who were taken hostage from Kibbutz Be’eri during the cross-border Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023, along with Or Levy, who was abducted from the Nova music festival on the same day, were led to a Hamas podium by armed men.
The three appeared thin, weak, and pale, in worse condition compared to the 18 hostages previously freed under the truce agreed upon last month.
“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-orchestrated handover ceremony. The ceremony included the hostages answering questions posed by a masked man while militants armed with automatic rifles stood on either side.
In another display of force by Hamas, dozens of its militants were deployed in central Gaza during the handover of the hostages to the International Committee of the Red Cross. They were then transported in ICRC vehicles to Israeli forces.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remarked that the frail appearance of the hostages being forced into an apparent staged interview by Hamas militants was shocking and would be addressed.
Israel’s President Isaac Herzog described the release ceremony as cynical and vicious, stating, “This is what a crime against humanity looks like.”
In exchange for the hostages’ release, Israel is freeing 183 Palestinian prisoners, including those convicted of involvement in attacks that killed dozens of people, and 111 detained in Gaza during the conflict.
In Ramallah, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, a bus carrying 42 freed Palestinian prisoners was greeted by a cheering crowd. Some waved Palestinian flags while others chanted “Allahu akbar” or “God is the most great.”
Among the Palestinian prisoners freed on Saturday was Eyad Abu Shkaidem, who was sentenced to 18 life terms in Israel for masterminding suicide attacks in retaliation for Israel’s 2004 assassinations of former Hamas chiefs Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi.
For the families of the Israeli hostages who have been held incommunicado in Gaza for over a year, the anticipation of their reunion has been a tumultuous journey filled with dread and hope.
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 stated.