By Avi (JO:) Oh no
SDEROT, Israel (Reuters) – Hundreds of Israelis gathered in Hostages Square in Tel Aviv, some cheering and others in tears, as a television newsreel broadcast the first glimpses of three hostages released under a Gaza ceasefire.
They watched as three women – Romi Gonen, Doron Steinbrecher and Emily Damari – got out of a car in Gaza City and were handed over by Red Cross officials amid a crowd blocked by Hamas gunmen.
Israeli soldiers have shared a video showing their families gathered in what looks like a military base crying in anger as they watch pictures of the surrender of Israeli soldiers in Gaza before they are returned to Israel.
“Their return today represents a light in the darkness, a moment of hope and a triumph of the human spirit,” said the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, a group that represents some families of hostages.
The release of the three women, the first of 33 hostages to be released in Gaza under the first phase of the deal, will be exchanged for 90 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.
The hostages were taken in one of the most tragic incidents in Israel’s history, when Hamas gunmen attacked a series of communities around the Gaza Strip on the morning of October 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people and soldiers and taking 251 hostages – men. , women, children and the elderly.
But amid hopes among many Israelis that the six-week ceasefire is the beginning of the war’s end, there are deep doubts about the remaining 94 hostages still being held in the Gaza Strip.
“The ceasefire is something I hope will succeed,” said Tomer Mizrahi, in Sderot, a southern Israeli city near Gaza that was attacked on October 7. “But as I know Hamas, you can’t even trust them. percent.”
Footage of Hamas police taking to the streets as the cease-fire continues underscored how far Israel has fallen from its initial stated war goals of destroying the Islamist group that has ruled Gaza since 2007.
“I am sad,” said Dafna Sharabi from Beit Aryeh-Ofarim, a Jewish settlement in the West Bank. “On the one hand, there is a ceasefire to strengthen the forces, to rest from all the madness, on the other, maybe it’s not the time,” he said.
“They should have been eliminated, they should have been eliminated,” he said. “My son was on reserve duty there for a year, for a whole year, and he saw all the Gazans coming back, Hamas returning its forces from all the places it had fought.”
THE MEN OF THE RENAISSANCE ARE NOT AT THE Banquet
After 15 months of war, Gaza is mostly in ruins. The Israeli campaign has killed around 47,000 Palestinians, according to the Palestinian health ministry and displaced most of the two million people living in the area.
But for many in Israel, the war will not end while Hamas stands still and there has been a series of rallies against the cease-fire as a sale that abandons the sleeping men of the age of the hostages, who are not in the first group of 33 hostages.
The Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has already resigned and his hard-line colleague Bezalel Smotrich also opposes the deal and says he has been assured that it is not the end of the war.
The Israel Democracy Institute said the latest Israel Voice Index, conducted shortly before the deal was agreed, found 57.5% of Israelis in favor of a comprehensive deal that would see all hostages return to end the war. An additional 12% supported the release of hostages in part in return for a temporary ceasefire.
Amid the mix of emotions, for some, the feeling of exhaustion outweighed any concern for the future.
“We have been waiting for this for a long time. We wanted it to be a complete victory, I hope we will get that complete victory, if not now then later,” said Shlomi Elkayam who owns a business in Sderot. “There is good and bad but in the end we are tired of everything and we want everyone here at home.”
