Per avi (JO:) Ohayon
SDEROT, Israel (Reuters) – Hundreds of Israelis gathered in Tel Aviv’s Hostage Square, some cheering and some in tears, as a giant television screen broadcast the first glimpse of the first three hostages to be freed under a Gaza ceasefire deal.
They watched as three women – Romi Gonen, Doron Steinbrecher and Emily Damari – got out of a car in Gaza City and were handed over to Red Cross officials amid a growing crowd held back by Hamas gunmen.
The Israeli military shared a video showing their families gathered in what appeared to be a military facility crying with emotion as they watched footage of the surrender to Israeli forces in Gaza before being returned to Israel.
“Their return today represents a beacon of light in the darkness, a moment of hope and triumph of the human spirit,” said the Forum of Hostages and Missing Families, a group that represents some families of hostages.
The release of the three women, the first of 33 hostages to be released from Gaza under the first phase of the deal, is in exchange for 90 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.
The hostages were taken in one of the most traumatic episodes in Israel’s history, when Hamas gunmen attacked a number of communities around the Gaza Strip in the early hours of October 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 civilians and soldiers and abducting 251 hostages – men, women, children and the elderly. .
But amid hopes among many Israelis that the six-week truce marks the beginning of the end of the war, there is deep unease over the uncertainty surrounding the remaining 94 hostages still being held in the Gaza Strip.
“The truce is something I hope will work,” said Tomer Mizrahi, in Sderot, a town in southern Israel near Gaza that was attacked on October 7. “But as I know Hamas, you can’t even trust them a cent.”
Images of Hamas police taking to the streets as the truce came into effect underscore how far Israel still is from its originally stated war goals of destroying the Islamist group that has ruled Gaza since 2007.
“I am torn,” said Dafna Sharabi from Beit Aryeh-Ofarim, a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank. “On the one hand, the ceasefire is to strengthen forces, to take a break from all the madness, on the other hand, maybe it’s not the time,” she said.
“They should have been eliminated, wiped out,” she said. “My son was on reserve duty for a year there, for a whole year, and he sees all the people of Gaza coming back, Hamas returning its forces to all the places where it fought.”
MEN WITH MILITARY VEHICLE ARE NOT IN THE AGREEMENT
After 15 months of war, Gaza is largely in ruins. The Israeli campaign has killed nearly 47,000 Palestinians, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, and displaced most of the two million people who live in the enclave.
But for many in Israel, the war will not be over while Hamas still exists and there have been a series of rallies opposing the ceasefire as a betrayal that abandons the able-bodied men captured who are not in the first group of 33 hostages.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has already resigned, and fellow hardliner Bezalel Smotrich also opposed the deal and said he had been assured it was not the end of the war.
The Israel Democracy Institute said its latest Israel Vote Index, conducted just before the deal was agreed, found that 57.5% of Israelis support a comprehensive deal that would return all hostages in exchange for an end to the war. An additional 12% supported a partial release of the hostages in exchange for a temporary ceasefire.
Amidst the mix of emotions, for some, a sense of exhaustion outweighed any concern for the future.
“We have been waiting for this for a long time. We wanted it to be an absolute victory, I hope we get that absolute victory, if not now then later,” said Shlomi Elkayam, who owns a company in Sderot. “There are pros and cons, but in the end we’re tired of everything. We’re tired and we want everyone here at home.”
