Israeli authorities are preparing to welcome home dozens of hostages held incommunicado by Hamas for more than a year in Gaza, without knowing whether they will return hungry, traumatized or dead.
Thirty-three hostages are expected to be released in the first phase of the Gaza ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, the first major release of its kind since a week-long ceasefire, Sept. weeks after the start of the war. Some families saw their loved ones in hostage-taking videos made by Hamas. But it is far from clear in what state the captives will return.
In Israeli hospitals, health officials have prepared isolated areas where hostages can begin to recover in privacy. The Israeli Ministry of Health has drawn up a detailed protocol for their psychological and physical treatment. There is particular concern that they may suffer from severe malnutrition.
“Those who were released then were already malnourished,” Hagar Mizrahi, a senior Israeli Health Ministry official, said of the hostages released during the 2023 truce. “Imagine their situation now, after 400 more days. We are extremely concerned about this.
After Hamas carried out the attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people and capturing around 250 others, around 105 Israeli and foreign hostages were released during the week-long truce in November of the same year. A few were later released during Israeli military operations, and Israeli soldiers recovered the bodies of dozens more.
But around 98 hostages remained in Gaza, dozens of whom are presumed dead by Israeli authorities.
Among the women, elderly men and other hostages returning under the first phase of the ceasefire deal, many are believed to have been held in the militant group’s warren of tunnels in Gaza, in conditions likely to leave scars physical and psychological.
Health officials reviewed every piece of intelligence — including hostage videos — in an effort to discern the hostages’ condition, Dr. Mizrahi said. A committee of officials, including Dr. Mizrahi, determined that some had been killed.
Israeli officials say the logistics of the release will be broadly similar to those of the previous ceasefire, when 105 hostages were freed in exchange for 240 Palestinians imprisoned in Israel.
During this exchange, Hamas fighters handed over hostages – mostly women and children – to the International Committee of the Red Cross. Red Cross workers transported the Gaza captives in a marked ambulance to Egypt before taking them to Israel.
At the border crossing, Israeli intelligence agents checked their identities. Around the same time, Israeli security officials released a specific group of Palestinian women and teenage prisoners.
This time, Israeli authorities established three reception points to receive the hostages along the border with Gaza, according to an Israeli military official. These will be made up of Israeli soldiers, as well as doctors and psychologists, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in accordance with protocol.
From there, the hostages will be taken to Israeli hospitals which are preparing to care for them, the official said.
The 105 hostages released in November 2023 returned home after approximately 50 days of captivity in Gaza. They arrived in a country that had fundamentally changed; some only then learned that friends and relatives had been killed in the Hamas-led attack.
Initially, authorities aimed to reintegrate the returning hostages as quickly as possible, according to Dr. Mizrahi. Now, health authorities recommend that freed hostages stay in the hospital for at least four days, if not longer, she said.
In the meantime, family members of the hostages, some of whom survived captivity themselves, can only wait.
“Last time we saw the Red Cross transferring the hostages, and some of them were running to their loved ones and hugging them,” said Einat Yehene, a clinical psychologist working for the Families Forum of hostages, a defense group. “It’s not going to be easy and similar this time, given the physical and emotional conditions we expect.”
