The Israelites waited anxiously on Wednesday for the expected release of four hostages by Hamas the next day as part of an agreement on the termination of fire in Gaza.
The Israelis and Palestinians caught emotional homes during a ceasefire, which began at the end of January. As part of the first phase of the contract, Hamas committed to returning 25 Israelites who held hostages in Gaza, and the remains of eight others in exchange for 1,500 Palestinian prisoners who are Israel in prison.
For the last few weeks, the Israelis watched the tearful parents and brothers and sisters have accepted their liberated loved ones, many of whom have barely been heard since they were abducted From Hamas and his allies during October 2023, an attack on southern Israel.
Palestinians welcomed the released prisoners, some of whom spent decades in Israeli prisons for militant attacks. Many others have been detained indefinitely without charges.
The scenes expected on Thursday in Israel are likely to be much darker.
“Tomorrow will be a difficult day for Israel. It will be a painful day, a day of sadness,” said Benjamin Netanyahu, an Israeli Prime Minister, in a brief statement on Wednesday.
The Israeli government announced that more than 30 hostages in Gaza were assumed to be dead, and their remains still hold the Palestinian militants. Some hostages were killed during the attack on October 7th and brought the dead to Gaza; others died in Israeli air attacks; And some were executed by their abductors, among other fates, according to the Israeli army.
Hamas said on Wednesday night that he would switch the bodies of Shiri Bibas and her two young children, as well as the remains of an older Israeli man. The Israeli Government confirmed that it had been given a list of names.
Mrs. Bibas, 32, was abducted with her two red -haired children – Ariel, 4 and Kfir, who had not yet been nine months. In November 2023. Hamas said all three were killed in an Israeli air attack. Israeli officials expressed concern about their destiny, but did not confirm their death.
Mrs. Bibas, Yarden’s husband, was abducted separately and taken, wounded, in Gaza’s belt. He was released as part of the trial earlier this month at the Hamas release ceremony with highly choreographed. For the Israelites and others, the family torture was emblematic for the cruelty of Hamas 2023, which lit a war in Gaza.
Hamas said that the fourth dead hostage that will return is Odeed Lifshitz, 84, who is abducted with his wife Yocheved Lifshitz during the Hamas attack. Like the Bibas family, it is abducted from Nir Oz, the Israeli community near the Gaza belt.
Mr. Lifshitz, a retired journalist, was a volunteer who was imbued with Gazani who received Israeli medical treatment licenses in hospitals. Hamas released Mrs. Lifshitz in late October 2023 for “humanitarian reasons”, but held his husband in captivity.
The bodies of Israeli hostages will be intended for the Red Cross International Committee of Israeli forces. Then they will return to Israel for the sake of forensic testing to check their identity and, if possible, determine the cause of death, which could take time.
According to the terms of the agreement, in exchange for four bodies, Israel will release Gazan prisoners, including women and minors who have not been charged with participating in attacks on October 7th.
Hamas is expected to release six living Israeli hostages on Saturday. Next week, they will return the remains of four other Israeli hostages, which will complete the list on which the two sides agreed under the terms of the fire interruption agreement. It will exchanged for Palestinian prisoners.
Assuming that editions go forward as planned, dozens of living hostages and more than 30 others who assumed that he would remain in Gaza until the beginning of March. Hamas took more than 250 people during the 2023 attack – mostly civilians.
Israel and Hamas agreed that the initial phase of the agreement would last six weeks, during which they would negotiate the next step. The first phase should be completed on March 2, but talks about expanding the agreement in the second phase is yet to be started, according to the Qatar Government, which mediated the truce together with Egypt and the United States.
Analysts say it is far from clear that both sides will reach a second phase agreement, which should end the war, release the remaining life hostages, and ensure the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.
Israeli leaders said they would not allocate nothing less than the end of Hamas’s reign and gauze demilitarization. Hamas showed a little appetite to separate his military wing or send his leaders to exile.
