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Hamas releases six hostages in latest exchange with Israel Hamas hands over six hostages but Israel delays release of 600 Palestinians
(about 3 hours later)
Militants in Gaza hand over last living hostages due to be freed in first phase of ceasefire deal Ceasefire in jeopardy as Israel waits for meeting of security cabinet under pressure from right-wingers
Hamas has freed six hostages in the latest exchange with Israel, as heightened tensions between the two sides cast doubt over their fragile ceasefire deal. Hamas released six Israeli hostages on Saturday, but Israel delayed the handover of more than 600 Palestinians it was due to free from its prisons in exchange, putting the five-week-old ceasefire agreement once more in jeopardy.
The six included three Israeli men seized from the Nova music festival and another abducted while visiting his family in southern Israel when militants stormed across the border in the 7 October attacks that triggered Israel’s 16-month campaign in the Gaza Strip. The government said the release would be delayed until after a scheduled meeting of the security cabinet on Saturday evening at the earliest.
Two of the hostages had been held by Hamas for about a decade after they each entered Gaza on their own. The delay imposes further strain on the precarious truce, which is at a particularly vulnerable moment, between first and second phases. The first phase is due to end next Saturday, but negotiations on the second phase have yet to begin.
Five of the captives were handed over in staged ceremonies that the Red Cross and Israel have previously condemned, with masked and armed Hamas fighters bringing them out in front of hundreds of Palestinians before transferring them to Red Cross vehicles. While a majority of Israelis want the release of the remaining hostages to be the government’s priority, there is resistance from the right wing of Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition, which wants the war to resume with the aim of obliterating Hamas.
The six hostages are the last living ones to be released under the first phase of the ceasefire deal. The hostages released by Hamas on Saturday included an Ethiopian-born Israeli and a Bedouin man, both with a history of mental illness, who had both been held captive for a decade after they wandered into Gaza on foot.
In Nuseirat, in central Gaza, Omer Wenkert, Omer Shem Tov, and Eliya Cohen were made to pose alongside Hamas fighters on the stage. A beaming Shem Tov kissed two militants on the head and blew kisses to the crowd. Hamas has come under heavy criticism for the displays, with Israel, the UN and the Red Cross saying they are cruel and do not respect the dignity of the hostages. Avera Mengistu, aged 39, crossed a barbed wire fence on the Gaza beach in September 2014.
Watching the release, Cohen’s family and friends in Israel chanted “Eliya, Eliya, Eliya!” and cheered when they saw him for the first time. Shem Tov’s grandmother exclaimed in joy as he saw him, crying: “Omer, my joy, my life.” “Our family has endured 10 years and five months of unimaginable suffering. During this time, there have been continuous efforts to secure his return, with prayers and pleas, some silent, that remained unanswered until today,” Mengistu’s family said in a statement.
The Israeli military said the final hostage, Hisham al-Sayed, 37, was released later on Saturday. The Bedouin Israeli crossed on his own into Gaza in 2015 and had been held ever since. His family told Israeli media that Sayed had previously been diagnosed with schizophrenia. Hisham al-Sayed, 36 years-old, a Bedouin from the Negev desert, walked into Gaza from the east in April 2015 and was detained by Hamas.
The new releases, to be followed by the freeing of hundreds of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, went ahead after tensions mounted over the latest dispute, which was triggered this week when Hamas initially handed over the wrong body in place of that of Shiri Bibas, an Israeli mother of two young boys abducted by the militants. “Why were they holding someone like that who did nothing wrong? He’s a man of peace, a man who wanted to reach Gaza. He loves Gaza, he did not go there as an aggressor,” Sayed’s father, Shaaban, told Israeli public radio earlier in the week. “This was more painful for us than everything else.”
The remains that Hamas transferred with her sons’ bodies on Thursday were later determined to be those of an unidentified Palestinian woman. In response, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, vowed revenge for “a cruel and malicious violation”, while Hamas suggested it had been a mistake. Five of the hostages released on Saturday were handed over in ceremonies which Hamas have used for propaganda and which have been condemned as cruel and disrespectful by the Red Cross.
On Friday night, the Palestinian Mujahideen Brigades, the small militant group believed to have been holding Bibas and her sons, handed over a second body. The family of Bibas said Israeli forensic authorities had confirmed the remains were hers. In one ceremony, Omer Wenkert, Omer Shem Tov and Eliya Cohen were posed alongside armed and masked Hamas fighters in front a large propaganda poster. An overjoyed Shem Tov kissed two militants on the head and blew kisses to the crowd assembled to watch the release.
“For 16 months we sought certainty, and now that it’s here, it brings no comfort, though we hope it marks the beginning of closure,” the family said. Under the terms of a ceasefire deal, Israel was supposed to free 602 Palestinians from its prisons, of which 445 had been captured in the Gaza Strip since the outbreak of the war. They were due to be released inside Gaza. Of the remaining 157 Palestinians freed, some were due to be deported while others were transferred to the West Bank. Of them, 50 had been serving life sentences.
The ceasefire deal has paused the war but is nearing the end of its first phase. Negotiations over a second phase, in which Hamas would release dozens more hostages in exchange for a lasting ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, are likely to be even more difficult. The head of the Israeli prison service, Kobi Yakobi, has sought to use the exchanges to make political points. Palestinians freed in an exchange the previous week had been made to wear T-shirts with an Arabic inscription: “We will not forget and we will not forgive”.
On Saturday, Yakobi prepared sweatshirts for the Palestinians being handed over that said: “I will pursue my enemies and overtake them, and I will not return until they are destroyed”, as well as bracelets inscribed: “The eternal people do not forget. I will pursue my enemies and overtake them.”
The release of six Israelis yesterday brought to 25 the number of hostages freed by Hamas in the first phase of the ceasefire. They also handed over four bodies of hostages who had been killed during the conflict, and are due to hand over four more in the coming week.
Among the bodies handed over on Thursday were those of two small boys from the same family, Ariel Bibas, 4, and his brother Kfir, nine months old, who were kidnapped in the surprise Hamas attack on Israel’s western Negev region on 7 October 2023. The remains of their mother, Shiri Bibas, were also handed over, but only after the body of another woman, presumed to be a Palestinian, was transferred. Hamas claimed it was a mistake but it caused outrage in Israel.
The US special envoy, Steve Witkoff, has encouraged the parties to move forward to a second phase, which would involve the release of the remaining 60 or so hostages (at least half of whom are believed by Israeli authorities to be dead), as well as hundreds more Palestinian prisoners and detainees, and the complete Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
President Donald Trump has however continued to offer Netanyahu support should he choose to go back to war, pointing to the incident involving Bibas’s body.
“He is not torn. He wants to go in,” Trump told Fox News Radio on Friday. “He is just so angry at what happened yesterday and he should be.”