On Saturday Hamas released four Israeli soldiers held hostage in the Gaza Strip, in a choreographed ceremony that was the last sign of the group’s effort to project power despite the 470 -day military campaign of Israel to remove them.
It was the second exit of hostages as part of an agreement of ceased the fire that entered into force almost a week earlier. According to the agreement, Israel released 200 Palestinian prisoners on Saturday who had been held in Israeli prisons.
A row of white buses transporting prisoners left to prison in the West Bank occupied by Israel. The prisoners were also issued by another structure near Beersheba in the south of Israel, said the Israeli prison service.
Many of the 200 prisoners released on Saturday were serving convictions for the involvement in attacks against the Israelis. About 70 are exiled abroad as part of the agreement and will not be able to return to their homes in the West Bank and Jerusalem, according to a list provided by the Palestinian authorities.
But the exchange of Hostage of prisoners on Saturday did not go entirely to plan. The rear administrator Daniel Hagari, an Israeli military spokesman, accused Hamas of violating the agreement not first of resting the Israeli civil civilians prisoner. Israeli officials said that, based on the agreement, Arbel Yehud, an Israeli woman held hostage to Gaza, should have been one of the four women released on Saturday.
Israel had to withdraw some of his strength to allow hundreds of thousands of displaced Gaza to head north after the exchange of Saturday. But the office of the Israeli Prime Minister said that Gazas would not allow Gazas to head north “until the release of the Civil Yehud Civil Release was organized”, leaving the times of the retreat of the troops and the return of the residents is not clear .
Hamas accused Israel of hesitating to fully implement the agreement of the fire. The dispute is one of the most significant between the parties since the ceased the fire has come into force.
Israeli officials said they believed that Mrs. Yehud was not held by Hamas, suggesting that he was perhaps detained elsewhere and that the compensation was not exclusively Hamas’ responsibility.
The four Israeli hostages released by Hamas Saturday, who were dressed in military style clothes, had worked as careful for the Israel army, reporting a suspect activity through the border, when they were caught. During the attack led by Hamas on 7 October 2023, the militants stormed the military base of Nahal Oz in Israel, killing more than 50 soldiers and abducting the four women and three other soldiers.
According to the terms of the cessation agreement, the fighting between the Israeli military militants and Hamas stopped on the morning of Sunday 19 January. The first hostages, three women seized in the attack on 2023, were released on Sunday, in exchange for 90 Palestinians the prisoners are held in Israel, who were released hours later.
The current phase of the ceased is to last only 42 days and free only 33 out of about 100 hostages still in Gaza, some of which are believed to have died. Significant diplomatic obstacles to extend the ceased the fire there are. Israel and Hamas have reached the agreement in part by remaining their most intractable controversies until a vaguely described “second phase”, which can be difficult to negotiate.
During the delivery ceremony of the hostages on Saturday, the Hamas armed fighters dressed with uncontaminated uniforms, their covered faces, escorted the four hostages on a stage of Palestine Square in the center of Gaza City. Then they were delivered to a representative of the Red Cross.
The ceremony managed by the stage, apparently designed to transmit Hamas’s strength and control to Gaza, included some stonant juxtapositions.
The background of the delivery was a large banner printed with slogans, one of which described Palestine in English as “the victory of the oppressed people against Nazi Zionism”.
The ceremony took place in an area devastated by the bombing campaign of Israel and the incursion of the land, with hundreds of fighters and civilians in uniforms gathered nearby. Hamas fighters were flooded with confetti.
The hostages smiled and greeted meetings to exulting and whistling spectators. In the past, Israeli officials have said that Hamas forced the hostages to seem cheerful in suggesting that they were well treated.
Adm. Hagari, the Israeli military spokesperson is an eniche ceremony.
Hamas “presented a false show of taking care of the hostages, when in reality, he cruelly kept men and women for 477 days,” said Amm. Hagari.
Before the four hostages were released, Hamas held a signature ceremony on stage, between one of its members and a representative of the Red Cross. The hostages were therefore led by the Red Cross to the Israeli troops stationed in the area.
Two Israeli helicopters transported the hostages to the Beilinson hospital in Petah Tikva, a city in the center of Israel, to the exciting applause of hundreds who gathered to accommodate their arrival with Israeli flags.
“We wanted to show the hostages and their families how much we care about them,” said Helena Dabush, 42 years old, who lives nearby and brought her four children.
The hostages released were all teenagers and recent recruits in the army when they were kidnapped. Karina Ariev, now 20 years old, is the daughter of Ukrainian immigrants; Daniella Gilboa, 20 years old, is an aspiring concert pianist of Central Israel; Naama Levy, 20 years old, was a triathlete raised in a city north of Tel Aviv; And Liri Albag, 19, is an aspiring architect and interior designer.
There was also jubilation in the occupied city of the western West Bank of Ramallah, where hundreds of Palestinians gathered in a municipal building to welcome the Palestinian prisoners released and pushed to take their loved ones as they left the buses of the Red Cross.
Some liberated prisoners, who still wore gray uniforms apparently issued by the Israeli prison authority, were kept on the shoulders of the crowd.
“We leave our prison, but the price is high for our freedom,” said Mohammad Arda, one of the liberated prisoners, while journalists, while the family and friends curled up around him. “I am thinking of the families of the prisoners that we have lost during the past year and a half.”
The 90 prisoners released almost a week earlier by Israel were mostly women and minors. This time, the Israeli authorities have freed many people who have been condemned for much heavier crimes, including the murder of Israeli civilians.
According to the Israeli government, Arda – an activist from the militant group of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad – had been sentenced to life imprisonment for attempted murder and plant an explosive device, among other crimes. He was one of the six prisoners who escaped briefly by an Israeli prison in 2021, Israeli and Palestinian stunning, before being captured.
More than 1,500 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel should be released as part of the first phase of the contract to cease the fire and the release of the hostages. Hamas has committed himself to release 33 hostages; 97 – about a third of which the Israeli soldiers believe they died – were held in Gaza when the agreement entered into force last Sunday, according to the Israeli authorities.
About 120 of the Palestinian prisoners released on Saturday were serving life sentences for involvement in attacks from the Israelis, according to the lists provided by the Prisoners office connected to Hamas. Those released on Saturday included Mohammad Odeh, Wael Qassim and Wissam Abbasi, who were arrested in 2002 for a series of mortal bombings that aim for Israelis in crowded civil areas. All three were serving life sentences.
One of the most notorious attacks in the group, which took place at the Jewish university of Jerusalem, killed nine people, including five Americans.
The three men are among those expected to be exiled abroad and will never be able to return to their homes in Jerusalem, according to the terms of the agreement.
Still uncertain Saturday was when the Palestinians displaced in the South and in the center of Gaza would be able to return to their neighborhoods in the north, many of which were destroyed by the bombing campaign of Israel.
The maintenance in the withdrawal of Israeli troops has left many Palestinians in an anxious waiting state while they were already preparing their personal effects, including kitchen supplies, clothes and mattresses.
“My husband and I waited for this day with so much anticipation, but I can’t help but feel frightened for the great destruction that I will see on the way back,” Nour Qasim said, 22 years old, originally residing in Gaza City.
The ceased the fire had been mediated by mediators of the Qatar, in Egypt and the representatives of both the outgoing administration of Biden and the Trump administration coming soon. It was a rare example of high profile cooperation between the two teams, but the difference in the way they could consider the conflict became clear on Friday.
The Trump administration said he would proceed with an expedition of 2,000 pound bombs to Israel that last summer, the then president Joseph R. Biden Jr. blocked himself abruptly to try to dissuade the Israeli military from the destruction of great Part of the city of Rafah, which the Israeli forces did it anyway.
The shipment includes 1,800 MK-84 bombs, said an official of the White House, who agreed to discuss sensitive weapons assistance on condition of anonymity. These bombs are judged by the US military officers generally too lethal and destructive for urban combat. Until the stop, the Biden administration had sent the bombs to Israel while its soldiers fought Hamas in Gaza.
The report was contributed by Fatima Abdulkarianim, AFIF AMIREH, Natan Odenheimer, The cartilage of Sheikh AhmadBilal Shbhair, Aritz Parra AND Edward Wong.