One day late winter, under lead sky and occasional ride, this was the moment when all the Israelis feared.
The return of the dead.
It began, as all the handover began, with a politically charged representation of Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups involved in the holding of Israeli hostages for more than 500 days.
Once again, there was a stage, lined with huge posters that emphasized the catastrophic consequences of the Israeli military campaign in Gaza and Palestinian determination to stay.
But instead of carved, sometimes exhausted, survivors, there were four black coffins, and each carried a photo and name – Odeed Lifschitz, Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, Ariel and Kfir – accompanied by the image of the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamina Netanyahuu.
The missile cottages were worn by a slogan: “Our bombs were killed.” Hamas has long claimed that all four were killed by Israeli air attacks on Gaza, something that was not checked.
As before, the Red Cross officers were available to monitor the procedure. In a rare public statement about the matter, they invited Hamas to perform a handover in a private, dignified way.
Their efforts were obviously in vain, but they tried to review the coffins from public control, pulling each in the white list before leaving them.
The viewing audience was smaller than usual, perhaps because of heavy rain.
After the handover on Thursday, at the military ceremony on the edge of the Gaza belt, the coffins wearing hostage were drawn to the Israeli flags and prayers offered by the main rabbi army.
The convoy of the vehicle then walked north to the Forensic Institute of Abu Kabir, in Jaffa, where the formal identification of the body takes place.
Along the routes, small groups of Israelis stood quietly in the rain, carrying Israeli flags and yellow banners – color associated with hostages and their supporters.
In Karmei Gat, where the displaced members of Kibbutz Nir Oz live, waiting for me to go home, the vigil was particularly gloomy.
All four published hostages were seized from Nir Oz on October 7, 2023.
The Telca Tel Aviva Square was a study in sadness, and people cry or sit on the ground, their heads in their hands.
The face of the red -haired Bibas boy – Ariel and Kfir – are plastered on the walls, road signs and windows up and down the ground. Fearing the worst, the Israelis still attacked the hope that the brothers may have survived, along with their mother Shiri.
“We were devastated by the news,” said Orly Marron, outside Abu Cabir.
“I have focused grandchildren and see the photos are really hearty.”
Oded Lifschitz’s son, Yizhar, meanwhile, said Israel worked that he had always been afraid of his father’s health, from the violent abduction in October 2023.
Oded was 84 at the time. He and his wife Yocheved were both taken to Khan Younis in Gaza, where they were separated, that they never see each other again.
Yocheved released Hamas two weeks after the attack.
“We have to close this wound and move forward,” Yizhar said, adding that his father, a well -known journalist and peace activist, had a long time to solve the conflicts of the Middle East.
“It’s sad that we went through this whole cycle and didn’t solve it,” Yizhar said. “We left him as something that was steaming and looking at where we are now.”
In the meantime, in Gaza, some Palestinians expressed their anger that the Israeli bodies had been handed over, while the unknown number of Palestinians killed in the Israeli military campaign remained buried in the apocalyptic wreckage of Gaza’s belt.
In addition, as many as 665 bodies of Israel hold on numbered cemeteries, according to the Palestinian protest group, a national campaign for the return of the martyrs’ bodies. He says some have been held for decades.
“I don’t like this agreement,” said Ikram Abu Salout at Khan Younis. “They did not remove the ruins and we do not even know where our children and families are.”
As she spoke, the bulldozers flying Egyptian flags finally arrived in the northern Gaza. Israel allowed the equipment to come in, in exchange for surrender Thursday and the publication of six more living hostages this Saturday.
