ABC / Reuters / AFP | 26.11.23
Hamas has agreed to release 13 Israeli hostages and seven foreign nationals in exchange for 39 Palestinian prisoners in Israel, after earlier delaying the release by several hours.
The deal to release hostages appeared to stall earlier on Saturday as Hamas’s al-Qassam Brigades said the plan would be delayed until Israel adhered “to the terms of the agreement”, with particular issues in aid deliveries and the selection criteria for Israel’s prisoner releases.
Israel denied violating the agreement.
Qatari and Egyptian officials helped break a deadlock that had delayed the next hostage release as part of Hamas and Israel’s truce agreement, Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesman said.
“After a delay, obstacles to release of prisoners were overcome through Qatari-Egyptian contacts with both sides, and 39 Palestinian civilians will be released tonight, while 13 Israeli hostages will leave Gaza in addition to 7 foreigners,” foreign ministry spokesman Majed Al Ansari wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Hamas confirmed the deal, saying the Egyptian and Qatari parties had confirmed Israel’s commitment to all the terms and conditions of the agreement.
Earlier, a Hamas source had told AFP that the handover of the hostages to the International Committee of the Red Cross had begun, but then was halted. There was no immediate comment from the ICRC whether the release of hostages and detainees had been delayed.
Under the truce — the first break in the seven-week war — 50 women and children held by Hamas were to be released in stages over four days in return for 150 Palestinian women and children who are among thousands of detainees in Israeli jails.
Hamas fighters freed 24 hostages on Friday — 13 Israelis, 10 Thai farm workers and a Filipino — and 24 Palestinian women and 15 teenagers were later released from Israeli detention.
Egypt said it received positive signals from all parties over a possible extension of the truce for one or two days as it holds extensive talks.
“[This] means the release of more detainees in Gaza and Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails,” Diaa Rashwan, the head of Egypt’s State Information Service said.
Delicate process to exchange hostages for prisoners begins, but no end in sight to Israel-Gaza war.
The former hostages underwent medical checks before returning for emotional reunions with relatives in Israel, where happiness mingled with concern for those still held by militants in Gaza.
“I’m excited for the families who today are going to hug their loved ones,” Shelly Shem Tov, the mother of Omer Shem Tov, 21, said on Friday in an interview with Israel’s Channel 12, although he was not among those released on Friday.
“I am jealous. And I am sad. Mostly sad that Omer is still not coming home.”
Roni Haviv, a relative of Ohad Munder, said she looked forward to giving the nine-year-old his favourite toy.
“I’m waiting to see Ohad and can’t wait to give him his Rubik’s Cube, which I know he really loved and he probably missed it so much,” she added.
He ran down a hospital corridor into his father’s open arms after being reunited, footage released by the hospital showed.
He and three other children released at the same time were in relatively good condition, Gilat Livni, the centre’s Director of Paediatrics, told reporters.
She said some had spoken about their ordeal, but declined to provide details.
“They shared experiences, we were up with them until late at night and it was interesting, upsetting and moving,” said Dr Livni.
In Palestinian homes, the joy at being reunited with loved ones was tinged with bitterness.
In at least three cases, prior to the prisoners’ release, Israeli police raided their families’ homes in Jerusalem in the West Bank, witnesses said. Police declined to comment.
“There is no real joy, even this little joy we feel as we wait,” said Sawsan Bkeer, the mother of 24-year-old Palestinian Marah Bkeer, jailed for eight years on knife and assault charges in 2015.
Israeli police were seen raiding her Jerusalem home before her daughter’s release.
“We are still afraid to feel happy,” she added.
“And at the same time, we do not have it in us to be happy due to what is happening in Gaza.”
After more than a year in prison, Palestinian Qusai Taqatqa reunited with his family and had breakfast in his house in the occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem.
“It’s an indescribable feeling, thank God I am among my family and among my mother and father, this means the world to me, thank God anyway,” Mr Taqatqa told Reuters.
His mother, Hanan Taqatqa, said that although she was happy her son was one of the prisoners released on Friday, her joy was not complete because of the children who died in Gaza and those displaced by the war.
Aid trucks go in, patients evacuated from north
Both sides have said hostilities would resume as soon as the truce ends, though US President Joe Biden said there was a real chance of extending the truce.
He said the pause was a critical opportunity to get humanitarian aid into Gaza and declined to speculate on how long the Israel-Hamas war would last.
Asked at a press conference what his expectations were, he said Israel’s goal of eliminating Hamas was legitimate but difficult.
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas after its fighters killed 1,200 people and took about 240 hostages after they broke through security barriers around the Gaza Strip and rampaged through Israeli communities around the blockaded enclave.
Since then, Israel has rained bombs on Gaza, killing about 14,000 people, roughly 40 per cent of them children, Palestinian health authorities say.
Hundreds of thousands of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have fled their homes, including most of those in its northern half.
With the truce now silencing the guns, more aid has begun to trickle in.
A UN convoy delivered aid to two shelters for displaced people in northern Gaza for the first time in over a month, the UN humanitarian office said, with 137 trucks of goods offloaded by the UNRWA reception point.
Four tankers of fuel and another four containing cooking gas entered the southern Gaza Strip via the Rafah Crossing early on Saturday, Israeli authorities said, stressing they were meant for essential humanitarian infrastructure in the Gaza Strip, such as hospitals.
But Mohammed Ghandour, who waited five hours to fill his cylindrical metal canister, left empty-handed. “I’m now going home without gas,” he said.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society said 196 trucks of humanitarian aid carried food, water and medical supplies through the Rafah crossing on Friday, the biggest such convoy into Gaza since October 7.
Aid groups have used the truce to evacuate patients and health workers from some northern hospitals that have all but collapsed due to attacks and lack of fuel.
The World Health Organization helped transfer 22 patients from Al-Ahli hospital to the south on Friday, its chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on social media platform X.
“To meet all the health needs in Gaza, much more support is needed and above all sustained ceasefire,” he said.
In Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, Tahani al-Najjar, a Palestinian woman returning home to find it in ruins, said a pause in the fighting was not enough.
“Tell me what we got out of this truce?” she asked. “What we got out of this truce? You only made our hearts hurt. Do you want to find a solution for us? You should make a permanent truce for us.”