The Palestinian militant group Hamas awarded three Israeli hostages on Saturday, whose appearance Glove shocked the Israelis, while Israel began to release dozens of Palestinians in the last stage of a cease-fire contract aimed at end the 15 -month war in Gaza.
Ohad ben Ami, 56, and Eli Sharabi, 52, both took the hostages of Kibbutz Be’eri during the cross -border attack led by Hamas on October 7, 2023, and or Levy, 34, removed today -Beyond the Nova Music Festival in southern Israel, were led to a podium by men armed in Hamas.
The three men all seemed thin, weak and pale, and in a worse state than the 18 hostages which had been released before under the truce reached last month.
“It looked like a skeleton, it was horrible to see,” Ohad Ben Ami’s mother-in-law told Channel 13 News, Michal Cohen, looking at the transfer ceremony led by Hamas, which included the hostages responding To the questions asked by a masked masked by a masked man as militants armed with automatic rifles was held on each side.
In another demonstration of force by Hamas, which paraded fighters during the previous outings, dozens of its activists were deployed in the center of Gaza while he put hostages to the International Committee of the Red Cross. They were then taken to ICRC vehicles to Israeli forces.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the sight of the fragile hostages forced to an apparent interview by Hamas activists was “shocking” and would be addressed.
“We will not pass on the shocking scenes that we have seen today,” Netanyahu said in a statement.
The president of Israel, Isaac Herzog, described the liberation ceremony as cynical and vicious. “This is what a crime against humanity looks like,” he said.
In exchange for the release of hostages, Israel released 183 Palestinian prisoners, some guilty of participation in attacks that killed dozens of people, as well as 111 detainees in Gaza during the war.
In Ramallah, in the West Bank occupied by Israeli, a bus carrying 42 released Palestinian prisoners was greeted by an acclaiming crowd. Some have agitated Palestinian flags and others have chanted “Allahu Akbar” or “God is the greatest”.
Among the Palestinian prisoners released on Saturday, Eyad Abu Shkaidem, sentenced to 18 perpetuity mandates in Israel for the brain of the suicide attacks in revenge for Israeli assassinations in 2004 of former chiefs of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Abdel-Aziz al-Rétissi .
For families of Israeli hostages who have been detained beyond Gaza for more than a year, the wait has been a roller coaster of dread and hope while the moments of reunion approached.
Images compared to those of the Holocaust survivors
The hostage families forum compared the images of the three hostages to the survivors of Nazi concentration camps during the holocaust.
“These images evoke the horrible images of the release of the camps in 1945, the darkest chapter in our history. We have to get all the hostages out of hell,” said the forum.
Some hostages are faced with a painful return. The two teenage girls of Sharabi and his wife of British origin were killed during the attack on Hamas on Kibbutz Be’éri, where one in 10 resident was killed.
The exchange is the last in a series of Swaps which have so far returned 13 Israeli hostages and five Thai hostages removed during the attack on Hamas and released 583 Palestinian prisoners and detainees.
Despite Hiccups, a 42-day ceasefire and an exchange of hostages for prisoner worked with support and mediation by us, by Egypt and Qatar, since it took place near it of three weeks.
But fears of the agreement could collapse before all hostages have been free since the surprise call of US President Donald Trump so that the Palestinians are transferred from Gaza and the enclave is given to the United States and has become the “Middle East Riviera.”
Hamas “stronger than before”
Alaa al-Hasatat, a 25-year-old member of the Qassam de Gaza brigades, the Hamas military wing, spoke to CBC News in Deir al-Balah, saying that “Hamas is back and stronger than before “And the Palestinians would not leave.
“Regarding Trump and the issue of trip, we lived 475 days of genocide … But we will stay in Gaza,” he said.
President Donald Trump suggested that the Palestinians are moved to transform Gaza into “Riviera du Middle East”. Larry Garber, former director of the United States International Development Mission for the West Bank-Gaza, says that Trump’s words are `dangerous ” because they could interfere with phase 3 of the ceasefire agreement- Fire, which includes the implementation of the reconstruction plan in Gaza.
Israel rejected the accusations of genocide by saying that it respects international law and has the right to defend itself after the attack on Hamas.
Hamas said in a press release that the crowd and the armed demonstration to the transmission of hostages have demonstrated the rejection by the Palestinians from the Trump plan and showed that Hamas could not be excluded in the after-by-Gaza arrangements war.
The Arab states and the Palestinian groups have rejected Trump’s proposal, which, according to criticism, would constitute ethnic cleaning.
Netanyahu, however, praised Trump’s intervention and his Minister of Defense ordered the soldiers to make plans to allow the Palestinians who wanted to leave Gaza to do so.
As part of the ceasefire agreement, 33 Israeli children, sick women and men, injured and older must be released during an initial phase in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees.
Negotiations on a second phase began this week to return the remaining hostages and accept a total withdrawal of the Israeli Gaza troops in preparation for a final end of the war.
Armed men led by Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and grabbing more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli accounts.
In response, Israel launched an air and land war in Gaza which killed more than 47,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza health authorities, and devastated a large part of the narrow enclave.
The International Criminal Court has published arrest mandates against Israeli leaders and Hamas for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Gaza conflict.
Rights defense groups have reported serious abuse of Palestinians in Israeli detention since the start of the Gaza War. The Israeli army investigates several cases of alleged abuse but rejects the allegations of systematic abuse in its detention establishments.
