The first Israeli and foreign hostages kidnapped by Hamas during its deadly attack on Israeli soil were released on Friday, under an agreement which also resulted in a truce between Israel and the Islamist movement in the Gaza Strip and releases of Palestinian detainees.
What there is to know
- The four-day truce came into effect Friday at 7 a.m. local time;
- With a ratio of one hostage to three Palestinians, the exchange should involve a total of 50 hostages for 150 Palestinians;
- A total of 24 hostages (13 Israelis, ten Thais and one Filipino) were released by Hamas on Friday;
- In return, 39 Palestinian prisoners were released from Israeli prisons;
- As soon as the sun rose, thousands of Palestinians displaced by the conflict flocked to the roads in the south of the territory to “return home”;
- The bombings stopped in Khan Younes, in the south of the small besieged territory where the inhabitants who fled the surrounding villages or the North shelled by the Israeli army came out en masse from the hospitals and schools where they had found refuge;
- The truce allowed the UN to increase the delivery of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip where 137 trucks have already been unloaded;
- Calm also reigns Friday in the border area between southern Lebanon and northern Israel, where exchanges of fire have taken place daily in recent weeks.
Balance sheets
- According to a latest report released Thursday by the Hamas government, 14,854 people have been killed in Israeli bombings on the Gaza Strip since October 7, including 6,150 children and 4,000 women;
- On the Israeli side, the Hamas attack left 1,200 dead, mainly civilians killed on October 7, according to the authorities. According to the army, 68 soldiers have been killed in the Gaza Strip since the start of the war.
For the first time in seven weeks of war, this truce, which came into force at dawn on Friday, offers respite to the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip, besieged and bombarded since October 7 by the Israeli army in retaliation for the Hamas attack.
A total of 24 hostages (13 Israelis, ten Thais and one Filipino) were handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Gaza by Hamas on Friday and returned to Israel via Egypt. For its part, Israel released 39 imprisoned Palestinian women and children, announced Qatar, the main mediator in the conflict.
Among the hostages released by Hamas are four children, including one aged two, and six elderly women. “Their physical condition is good and they are currently undergoing a medical and emotional evaluation,” said the director of the Schneider Children’s Medical Center, Efrat Bron-Harlev, who received them.
PHOTO SAMAR ABU ELOUF, THE NEW YORK TIMES
A total of 24 hostages, 13 Israelis, ten Thais and one Filipino, were handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Gaza by Hamas on Friday.
In Tel Aviv, smiling faces of freed hostages were projected onto the facade of the Art Museum, with the words: “I’m back home.” But many hostage relatives think especially of their loved ones still detained in Gaza.
“I am happy to have found my family. Feeling joy is allowed and it is allowed to shed a tear. It’s human,” declares Yoni Asher, who has just been reunited with his wife Doron and his two daughters aged two and four, in a video broadcast by the Hostage Families Forum.
“But I’m not partying, I won’t party until the last hostages come home,” he adds.
His wife Doron lost her mother in the attack, and his brother and his mother’s partner are still hostages in Gaza.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who makes the release of the hostages a prerequisite for any ceasefire, said on Friday he was determined to “bring them all back” to Israel.
The army estimates that around 240 people were kidnapped by Hamas on October 7.
Jubilation in the West Bank
Qatar, which led negotiations with Egypt and the United States, obtained an agreement on Wednesday on a renewable four-day truce between Israel and Hamas, during which 50 hostages held in Gaza must be released, as well as than 150 Palestinians detained in Israel.
Israeli prison authorities have also confirmed the release of 39 Palestinian detainees.
In the occupied West Bank, scenes of jubilation accompanied the return of released prisoners, welcomed as “heroes” as in Beitunia or further north, in the Nablus refugee camp.
PHOTO AMMAR AWAD, REUTERS
Palestinian prisoner released by Israel
In East Jerusalem, occupied by Israel since 1967, any celebration around freed prisoners has, however, been banned.
“I am happy but my release came at the price of the blood of the martyrs,” says Marah Bakir, 24, eight of whom are in prison for the attempted murder of an Israeli border guard, referring to the deaths in Israeli bombings. in Gaza. “I spent the end of my childhood and my adolescence in prison, far from my parents and their hugs, but that’s how it is with a State that oppresses us and leaves none of us alone,” adds- She.
” I’m going home ”
According to Israeli authorities, 1,200 people, the vast majority civilians, were killed during the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7. In retaliation, Israel relentlessly bombed the Palestinian territory and launched a ground offensive on October 27 to “eliminate” Hamas, in power in Gaza since 2007.
In the Gaza Strip, 14,854 people, including 6,150 children, were killed by Israeli bombings, according to the Hamas government.
At dawn on Friday, when the incessant airstrikes for nearly 50 days had died down, as had the rocket fire towards Israel from Gaza, tens of thousands of Palestinians displaced in the south of the territory had already gathered their personal belongings to return to their villages.
Omar Jibrine, 16, had taken refuge with eight other members of his family at Nasser hospital in the town of Khan Younès. A quarter of an hour before the truce even came into force, he took the road towards his village a few kilometers away: “I’m going home,” he told AFP.
But as cars and carts set off, leaflets in Arabic launched from the air by the Israeli army warned: “The war is not over yet.” “Returning to the north is prohibited. »
The army considers the northern Gaza Strip, from where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have fled to the south, as a combat zone housing the center of Hamas’s infrastructure.
“Next phases”
Israel has committed, at the end of this truce, to “continue” the fighting against Hamas, classified as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and Israel.
PHOTO IBRAHEEM ABU MUSTAFA, REUTERS
The Israeli army considers the northern Gaza Strip, from which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have fled to the south, as a combat zone.
“Taking control of the northern Gaza Strip is the first step in a long war and we are preparing for the next phases,” army spokesman Daniel Hagari said.
” See […] “All the faces of the 24 hostages freed this evening fill us with relief, but it also strengthens our resolve, it reminds us who we are fighting for and that we will not stop until each of our hostages has returned home.” he also said.
PHOTO MOHAMMED ABED, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
A Palestinian boy holds an Israeli leaflet, warning Gaza citizens not to return to the northern Strip.
The leader of Hamas in exile in Qatar, Ismaïl Haniyeh, affirmed Friday that “the enemy took the gamble of recovering the hostages thanks to the barrel of its rifles, to the killings and to the genocide” but “that after 50 days of crimes and in horror, the enemy had to submit to the conditions of resistance” (Hamas, Editor’s note).
200 humanitarian trucks
Since October 9, Israel has placed the territory, already subject to an Israeli blockade since 2007, in a state of “complete siege”, cutting off deliveries of electricity, water, food, medicine and fuel.
The truce is expected to allow more aid convoys into the small, overpopulated territory where, according to the UN, 1.7 million of the 2.4 million people have been displaced by the war.
PHOTO AMMAR AWAD, REUTERS
Israel committed, at the end of this truce, to “continue” the fighting against Hamas.
On Friday, 200 trucks loaded with aid entered Gaza, according to the Israeli Defense Ministry’s department responsible for civil affairs in Gaza. This is the “largest humanitarian convoy” since the start of the war, underlined the United Nations agency responsible for humanitarian coordination (Ocha).
In addition, 129,000 liters of fuel were able to cross the border into Gaza, according to Ocha.
But the truce remains “insufficient” to bring in the necessary aid, international NGOs stressed, calling for a real ceasefire.
PHOTO SAID KHATIB, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
The truce is expected to allow more aid convoys into the small, overpopulated territory where, according to the UN, 1.7 million of the 2.4 million people have been displaced by the war.