2023-11-25 12:20:44
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 following seven weeks of war.
Posted at 7:20 a.m.
Adel ZAANOUN with Hazel WARD in Tel Aviv Agence France-Presse
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 on Wednesday by Qatar with the support of the United States and Egypt, and which appeared to be respected on Saturday.
This agreement, concluded following 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, then were hospitalized, surrounded by their families.
Israel, for its part, released 39 Palestinians on the first day of the truce.
“It’s just the beginning, but so far it’s going well,” US President Joe Biden said on Friday, adding that there was a “real chance” of extending 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.
Among the remaining hostages are 20 Thai nationals, the Thai Foreign Ministry said on Saturday.
” 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 following being kidnapped like his grandmother in the kibbutz of Nir Oz.
The spokesperson for Schneider Children’s Hospital in Petah Tikva, a suburb of Tel Aviv, said Saturday that the four children and four women former hostages who were admitted there were with their families, “surrounded by medical and psycho-social teams”, and that their condition was “good”.
The five other released hostages, elderly women, are at Wolfson Hospital in Holon, near Tel Aviv, “in stable condition”, according to the establishment’s spokesperson.
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.
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.
PHOTO AHMAD GHARABLI, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
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.
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.
Traffic jams in Gaza
The truce offers a fragile moment of respite to the inhabitants of Gaza.
The din of war gave way to the horns of traffic jams and the sirens of ambulances trying to make their way among the displaced, leaving hospitals and schools where they had found refuge in droves to “return home”.
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.
PHOTO MAHMUD HAMS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
The din of war gave way to the horns of traffic jams and the sirens of ambulances trying to make their way among the displaced.
“The truce feels good, we hope it will last. It’s good when it’s quiet. People want to live,” said Mohammed Dheir, who found refuge with his family in Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from the north have massed in this part of the territory since the start of the war to try to escape the war.
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 by the Israeli army on Friday warned: “the war is not over yet”, “returning to the northeast is forbidden and very dangerous!” ! ! »
The truce should also allow the entry of a greater number of humanitarian aid convoys into the Gaza Strip.
The territory, subject to an Israeli blockade since 2007, has been placed under “complete siege” since October 9 by Israel, which has cut off the supply of water, food, electricity, medicine and fuel.
On Friday, 200 trucks loaded with aid entered Gaza from Egypt, 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).
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