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Hamas has published the first two of the six expected Israeli hostages that should be released from captivity in Gaza on Saturday, while a precarious ceasefire assaulted by the recriminations approaches the end of its first phase.
Avera Mengistu, a 39-year-old Ethiopian-Israeli man described by his family as a mental patient since 2014, and Tal Shoham, 40, were released during a carefully staged ceremony in Rafah, in the south of Gaza, in the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Mengistu had been detained by Hamas after wandering to Gaza by his own will while Shoham was caught captive during the assault of the Palestinian militant group against Israel on October 7, 2023.
The Israeli army confirmed its release, saying that they had been transported in southern Israel by the Red Cross.
Eliya Cohen, 27 held since 2015.
In exchange for the liberation of the six, Israel is expected to release 600 Palestinian prisoners, including hundreds of prisoners without indictment or a trial, and 110 serving sentences for life or long after being sentenced in military prisons for violence against the Israelis.
Including today’s exchange, Hamas will have published 29 hostages, including four dead, in exchange for more than 1,600 Palestinian prisoners.
The six are the last living hostages to be exchanged for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners as part of the first phase of the ceasefire, which should end Thursday with the release of four additional bodies.
The second phase, for which the negotiations have still started seriously, could see a permanent end at 15 months of war in exchange for the release of a 60 remaining hostage, which includes male soldiers and also many allegedly being dead.
The first phase of six weeks approached to collapse, which caused interventions from the United States, Egypt and Qatar to help maintain it on the right track.
In the last flash point, Hamas earlier this week published an unidentified body instead of that of Shiri Bibas, an Israeli mother of 32 whose two young children were also captured during the October 7 attacks. Their bodies were released earlier this week.
On Friday, Hamas published a second organization, subsequently identified by Israeli lawists like Bibas, mother in Kfir and Ariel. Hamas blamed chaos in the broken Palestinian enclave for handing over the bad body.
In Israel, the capture of the Bibas family – the father of the children was released alive in February in the first stage of the exchanges – became a symbol of both the brutality of Hamas in the attack which sparked the war in Gaza And the failure of the Israeli authorities to protect them.
The Israeli army said on Friday that autopsies showed that the two children had been murdered during their captivity, rather than killed by an Israeli air strike, as Hamas since November 2023 said.
“The terrorists did not shoot the two young boys – they killed them with bare hands,” said Daniel Hagari, Israeli military spokesperson. “Subsequently, they committed horrible acts to cover these atrocities.”
Despite the first heavy phase of the ceasefire, Israel sent a team of low-level negotiations to Cairo for talks on the second stage, but little progress has so far been made. Hamas indicated its desire to continue negotiations in the second phase.
Hamas killed at least 1,200 people in Israel during its cross -border raid on October 7 and took around 250 hostages, according to local officials. Israel’s reprisals have killed nearly 50,000 Palestinians, said health officials in Gaza, and left the enclave – housing more than 2.3 million Palestinians – under the influence of a humanitarian disaster.
