Twenty hostages held in the Gaza Strip, including 13 Israelis, will be released Saturday, November 25, 2023 in exchange for 39 Palestinian prisoners, Qatar announced after several hours of blockade, on the second day of the truce between Israel and the Islamist movement Hamas.
This truce, the result of an agreement under the auspices of Doha, offered a new day of respite to the inhabitants of the besieged territory after seven weeks of war, triggered by an unprecedented Hamas attack on Israeli soil on October 7.
“After a delay, the obstacles to release the 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 with seven foreigners”said Qatari foreign ministry spokesman Majed Al-Ansari on X.
Hamas confirmed that it would release the hostages before midnight, after announcing in the afternoon that it was delaying the expected release of this second group of hostages, after a first Friday.
In Beirut, Osama Hamdan, a Hamas official, had mentioned, to explain the delay, “shooting at our people, the number of humanitarian aid trucks for the northern Gaza Strip and failure to meet the selection criteria for the release of women and child prisoners” Palestinians.
The Israeli army considers the northern third of the Gaza Strip to be an area of fighting that it believes houses the Hamas infrastructure center, which took power in 2007. It ordered the people out and prevented anyone from returning.
– “Get them out of hell” –
According to Hamas’ Ministry of Health, seven people were injured by Israeli fire as several thousand displaced Gazans took advantage of the pause in the fighting to head north to return home.
The agreement, also concluded with the support of the United States and Egypt and entered into force on Friday, provides for four days of truce that should allow the release of 50 hostages and 150 Palestinian prisoners. This renewable break, which seemed respected on Saturday, also includes the entry of humanitarian aid and fuel into Gaza.
The Israeli bombings, which have continued since the October 7 attack and the military offensive on northern Gaza, have come to an end, as has the rocket fire from the Islamist movement on Israel.
On Friday, 13 first Israeli hostages, women and children, were handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and returned to Israel via Egypt to reunite with their families. Hamas also released ten Thais and one Filipino, who were not part of the agreement.
In return, Israel released 39 Palestinians, women and youth under the age of 19.
In Israel, relatives of the hostages still held in Gaza were anxiously awaiting a way out of a nightmare that has lasted for seven weeks.
In Tel Aviv, tens of thousands of protesters gathered in the evening in Hostage Square to demand their release. Get them out of hell,” they read on a banner.
– “Tremendous pressure” –
“Today, we are happy to see ours return but we must not forget all those who have not yet returned,” said Yael Adar, the stepdaughter of Yaffa Adar, 85 and the oldest of the ex-hostages, on the Ynet news site.
Yael Adar’s son Tamir, a 38-year-old father of two young children, is still being held hostage after being abducted as his grandmother in the kibbutz of Nir Oz in southern Israel.
According to the Israeli authorities, 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed on 7 October, and 240 people were taken hostage.
In retaliation, Israel promised to “eliminate” Hamas, classified as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and Israel, relentlessly bombing the Palestinian territory and launching a ground offensive on October 27, until the truce.
In the Gaza Strip, 14,854 people, including 6,150 children and youth under the age of 18, were killed by Israeli strikes, according to the Hamas government.
The Israeli army chief of staff, General Herzi Halevi, warned that the war was not over. We will resume attacking Gaza as soon as the truce is over (…) to dismantle Hamas and create enormous pressure to bring back as soon as possible as many hostages as possible, until the last of them,’ he said.
– Overcrowded hospitals –
In the occupied West Bank, scenes of jubilation, amidst fireworks, Palestinian flags and various movements including the green Hamas banner, accompanied the return of the released prisoners on Friday evening.
In East Jerusalem, occupied by Israel since 1967, demonstrations of joy were prohibited.
“I was waiting for the day when I would be released from prison and could hug my mother,” Rawan Nafez Mohammad Abou Matar, who returned home to Beitlo near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, told AFP on Saturday.
“I haven’t touched or hugged her in this way for years,” says the young woman, who was sentenced in 2015 when she was 21, to nine years in prison for attempted murder on an Israeli border guard.
The truce offers a moment of respite to the thousands of displaced people inside Gaza who left hospitals and schools in the southern part of the territory where they had taken refuge to return home.
In hospitals in the southern Gaza Strip, ambulance convoys carrying wounded people from the north continue to arrive. But, says Ashraf al-Qidreh, spokesman for Hamas’ health ministry, “they no longer have the capacity or equipment” to cope.
“It feels good” –
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 2.4 million inhabitants. “The truce feels good, we hope it will last. It’s good when it’s quiet. People want to live,” Mohammed Dheir, who took refuge with his family in Rafah, southern Gaza, told AFP. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from northern Gaza have gathered in this part of the territory since the beginning of the war to try to escape the bombing. The truce has accelerated the arrival of humanitarian aid to Gaza, which has been under Israel’s total siege since October 7. These shipments, whose entry from Egypt is subject to the Israeli green light, have been arriving in recent weeks in dribs and drabs. Dozens of trucks crossed the Rafah border on Saturday for the second day in a row, according to footage shot by AFP.
