New releases of Hamas hostages and Palestinian prisoners are expected on Saturday, the second day of the truce between the Islamist movement and Israel which offers a fragile respite to the inhabitants of Gaza after seven weeks of war.
Israeli authorities announced that 14 hostages held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip since its attack on Israel on October 7, and 42 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel were to be released on Saturday.
These releases in both camps are accompanied by a renewable four-day truce, obtained by Qatar with the support of the United States and Egypt, and which appeared to be respected on Saturday.
The agreement, concluded after several weeks of negotiations, provides for the release of a total of 50 hostages held by Hamas and 150 Palestinians detained in Israeli prisons.
The first 24 hostages released on Friday (13 Israelis, ten Thais and one Filipino) through the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) returned to Israel via Egypt and were hospitalized, surrounded by their families.
Israel, for its part, released 39 Palestinians on the first day of the truce.
“There are approximately 215 hostages remaining in Gaza,” Israeli army spokesman Doron Spielman said. “We don’t know, in many cases, whether they are dead or alive,” he added.
” Do not forget “
In Tel Aviv, smiling faces of freed hostages were projected Friday evening on the facade of the Art Museum, with the words: “I’m back home.”
The Israeli authorities asked the media to let the first ex-hostages reunite with their families in the strictest privacy. And those whose loved ones are still detained by Hamas waited in anguish for an end to a nightmare that has lasted for seven weeks.
“Today, we are happy to see our people return, but we must not forget all those who have not yet returned,” testified Yael Adar, the daughter-in-law of Yaffa Adar, an 85-year-old woman who is the oldest of the ex-hostages, on the Ynet news site.
“We will not be silent until the last of the detainees returns home,” promised Yael Adar, whose son Tamir, a 38-year-old father of two young children, is still in Hamas hands after being kidnapped like his grandmother in the kibbutz of Nir Oz.
Four released children and four women were transported to Schneider Children’s Hospital in Petah Tikva, a suburb of Tel Aviv, where their condition on Saturday was “good”, according to the spokesperson for this establishment. The other five, elderly women, are at Wolfson Hospital in Holon, near Tel Aviv, also surrounded by their families.
The Israeli army estimates that around 240 people were kidnapped by Hamas during the bloody attack carried out by Islamist commandos in Israeli territory on October 7. 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.
“This is one of the objectives of the war,” he said.
But the Jordanian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ayman Safadi, hoped on Saturday that “this truce would transform into a permanent ceasefire”.
Jubilation in the West Bank
In the occupied West Bank, scenes of jubilation, amid fireworks, Palestinian flags and various movements, including the green banner of Hamas, accompanied the return of Palestinian prisoners released by Israel.
In East Jerusalem, occupied by Israel since 1967, demonstrations of joy were, however, prohibited.
“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,” testified Marah Bakir, 24 years old.
The young woman, back in her family home in the Beit Hanina neighborhood, spent eight years in prison for the attempted murder of an Israeli border guard.
According to Israeli authorities, 1,200 people, the vast majority civilians, were killed on October 7 during the attack by Hamas, classified as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and Israel.
In retaliation, Israel relentlessly bombed the Palestinian territory and launched a ground offensive there on October 27, in order to “eliminate” Hamas, in power in Gaza since 2007.
In the Gaza Strip, 14,854 people, including 6,150 children, were killed by Israeli strikes, according to the Hamas government.
Hospitals overwhelmed
The truce offers a fragile moment of respite to the inhabitants of Gaza.
On Friday, thousands of displaced people left hospitals and schools in the south of the territory where they had sought refuge, rushing to return home.
In hospitals in the southern Gaza Strip, ambulance convoys evacuating wounded from hospitals in the north continue to arrive. But, assures Doctor Ashraf al-Qidreh, spokesperson for the Hamas Ministry of Health, “they no longer have the reception capacity or the equipment” to cope.
More than half of the territory’s housing has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN, and 1.7 million people have been displaced, out of the 2.4 million in the Gaza Strip.
“The truce feels good, we hope it will last. It’s good when it’s quiet. People want to live,” Mohammed Dheir, who found refuge with his family in Rafah, in the south of Gaza, told AFP.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from the north have massed since the start of the war in this part of the territory to try to escape the bombings.
The army considers the northern third of the Gaza Strip, where Gaza City is located, to be a combat zone housing the center of Hamas’s infrastructure and has ordered all civilians out.
Leaflets launched from the air on Friday by the Israeli army warned: “The war is not over yet”, “Returning to the North is prohibited and very dangerous!!! »
The truce should also allow the acceleration of the arrival of humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip. These cargoes, whose entry from Egypt is subject to the green light from Israel, have been arriving in recent weeks in trickles.
After the arrival on Friday of 200 trucks loaded with aid, according to an Israeli government service, a record quantity since the start of the war, new trucks crossed the Rafah border post on Saturday, according to images shot by the AFP.
In the neighboring town of Rafah, many residents had left their empty gas canisters online, awaiting delivery.
“No one can cook or do anything without gas,” said a resident, Ezzeddine Abu Omeira: “All residents hope and are ready to receive gas to make their lives easier. »