The Palestinian terrorist group, Hamas, handed over four women captured by Israeli soldiers to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on Saturday. Hours later, Israeli authorities said they had released 200 Palestinian prisoners and detainees as part of a Gaza ceasefire deal aimed at ending the 15-month-old conflict in Gaza.
The four freed soldiers were led to a platform in Gaza City amid a large crowd of Palestinians and surrounded by dozens of armed Hamas members. The women waved and smiled before being taken out, into ICRC vehicles that transported them to Israeli forces. The Israeli military said it found four in Gaza.
The soldiers – Karina Ariev, Daniela Gilboa, Naama Levy, all 20 years old, and Liri Albag, 19 – were all stationed at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Gaza and were captured by Hamas who attacked their base during an attack on Israel in October. .7, 2023.
A video of their abduction was broadcast in May and showed the five men who had been conscripted into the army, dressed in pajamas and stunned and others covered in blood, being arrested and put in a jeep. The images were obtained from body cameras worn by gunmen who attacked the Nahal Oz camp in southern Israel where women work as guards.
After being reunited with their families at an Israeli military base near the Gaza border, the freed hostages will be taken to a hospital in central Israel, Israel’s Health Ministry said.
Hamas said the 200 Palestinians who were part of the trade included members of Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), some of whom are serving life sentences. Egyptian state-run TV reported that Israel freed about 70 Palestinians from Egypt.
The ICRC said it has transferred a total of 128 prisoners to Gaza and the West Bank, and the majority will be sent to the West Bank. A convoy of Red Cross buses carrying some freed Palestinians is seen leaving the Ofer military prison in the West Bank.
Saturday’s exchange was the second since a cease-fire began last Sunday and Hamas offered three Israeli citizens in exchange for 90 Palestinian prisoners.
The cease-fire agreement, reached after months of ongoing talks organized by Qatar and Egypt and supported by the United States, halted hostilities for the first time since a one-week deal was reached in November 2023.
Hamas is not following the release plan, Israel said
After Saturday’s release, Israeli army spokesman Avichay Adraee said in an X-post that Hamas did not comply with a ceasefire agreement to release Israeli civilians first. Israel expected the release of Arbel Yehoud, one of the hostages, on Saturday.
Emily Damari, 28, Doron Steinbrecher, 31, and Romi Gonen, 24, were the first Israeli hostages freed from Gaza on Sunday. Gonen was kidnapped at the Nova music festival, while others were kidnapped at Kibbutz Kfar Aza.
Israel will not allow Palestinians to cross into northern Gaza until Yehoud is released, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. Israel was expected to begin withdrawing from the Netzarim corridor – the east-west road that separates Gaza – and allow displaced Palestinians from the south to return to the north for the first time since the war began.
“We are determined to return Arbel Yehoud, an Israeli citizen kidnapped in Nir Oz (kibbutz), as well as Shiri Bibas and her two children, Kfir and Ariel, whose welfare we are deeply concerned about,” Israeli military spokesman Rear Adm. . Daniel Hagari said.
A Hamas official told Reuters that Yehoud is safe and will be released next Saturday.
One of the displaced Palestinians waiting to return to northern Gaza is 53-year-old Suhair Bakr. He told CBC News that his only son died in the war shortly after leaving his home in Gaza City. He does not know where he is buried.
He said the exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners is “not a victory,” considering how many homes and families have been destroyed in Gaza.
“Our victory is that we are going home, even if our homes are destroyed, even though we know that nothing will be rebuilt,” said Bakr. “There is no water, no electricity, no homes.”
Mahmoud Al-Zain, who was also waiting on Saturday near Gaza City for a chance to return, said his house was bombed on the eighth day of the war.
“We never dreamed we would go back,” said the 48-year-old man.
“We have family in northern Gaza … all the time we grew up in Gaza. We cannot live without Gaza,” he said.
The head of the UN Development Program, Achim Steiner, said on Wednesday that the war has restored development in Gaza in 60 years. He said two-thirds of the buildings in the area were damaged or destroyed.
“You can imagine two million people, in the Gaza Strip who have lost not only a place to live, they have lost public infrastructure, sewage systems, clean water supply systems, public waste management. All these important infrastructures and services are easily absent,” said Steiner at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos. , Switzerland.
In the first six-week phase of the deal, Hamas agreed to release 33 hostages, including children, women, elderly men and the sick and injured, in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons, while the Israeli army withdrew from others. from their positions in the Gaza Strip.
In the next phase, the two sides will negotiate the exchange of the remaining hostages, including elderly men, and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, which lies largely in ruins after 15 months of fighting and Israeli bombardment.
Israel launched its operation in Gaza following an attack by Hamas on October 7, in which the terrorists killed 1,200 people and kidnapped more than 250 people and returned them to Gaza, according to Israeli figures. Since then, more than 47,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to health authorities there.
After last Sunday’s release of hostages Romi Gonen, Emily Damari and Doron Steinbrecher and the recovery of the body of an Israeli soldier who had been missing for ten years, Israel says 94 Israelis and immigrants are still being held in Gaza, although it is not clear how many of them. he is still alive.
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