Three women hostages are the first to be freed under ceasefire deal
20/1/2025 5:57
Thousands of
Israelis gathered in Hostages Square in Tel Aviv, some cheering
and some in tears, as a giant television screen broadcast the
first glimpse of the first three hostages to be released under
the Gaza ceasefire deal.
They watched as the 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 surging crowd
that was held back by armed men in camouflaged military gear,
with green Hamas headbands.
"I'm excited, I was so nervous, that they would come safe
and alive to their mothers' hands. They were in the hands of
terrorists for 471 days, three young women," said Shay Dickmann,
whose cousin was found slain by her Hamas captors in August.
The Israeli military shared video showing their families
gathered in what appeared to be a military facility crying out
in emotion as they watched footage of the handover to Israeli
forces in Gaza before they were brought back into Israel.
Pictures shared by the families showed the three women
embracing their mothers at a reception centre, with Emily Damari
beaming broadly and waving a bandaged hand missing two fingers
at family on the other end of a mobile phone video call.
After a nerve-racking morning, waiting to hear whether
Damari would be one of the three hostages freed on Sunday, her
friends breathed a sigh of relief.
"We didn't have any sign of life from her for a whole year
and this is the first time we are seeing her, and we are seeing
her walking on her two feet and we are just waiting here to hug
her and say how much we love her," said Guy Kleinberger.
They were later flown to a hospital in Tel Aviv in a
helicopter that Israeli media reported was piloted by the head
of the Israeli air force.
"Romi, Doron, Emily," an entire nation embraces you," Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.
UNCERTAINTY SURROUNDING REMAINING HOSTAGES
The release of the three women, the first of 33 hostages due
to be freed from Gaza under phase one 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
string of communities around the Gaza Strip in the early hours
of Oct. 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 civilians and soldiers and
abducting 251 hostages - men, women, children and elderly.
But amid hope among many Israelis that the six-week
ceasefire marks the beginning of the end to the war, there is
deep unease about the uncertainty surrounding the remaining 94
hostages still held in the Gaza Strip.
"The ceasefire is something that I hope will work out," said
Tomer Mizrahi, in Sderot, a town in southern Israel within sight
of Gaza that was attacked on Oct. 7. "But as I know Hamas, you
cannot even trust them one percent."
Images of Hamas police emerging on to the streets as the
ceasefire took effect underscored how far Israel remains from
its originally stated war aims of destroying the Islamist group
that has ruled in Gaza since 2007.
"I'm torn," said Dafna Sharabi from Beit Aryeh-Ofarim, a
Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank. "On the one hand
there's a ceasefire to strengthen the forces, to rest from all
the madness, on the other, 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 over there ... and he sees
all the Gazans returning, Hamas returning its forces to all the
places he fought in."
MEN OF MILITARY AGE NOT IN THE DEAL
After 15 months of war, Gaza lies largely in ruins. Israel's
campaign has killed almost 47,000 Palestinians, according to the
Palestinian health ministry 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 stands and there have been a series of rallies opposing
the ceasefire as a sell-out that abandons men of military age
taken captive, who are not in the first batch of 33 hostages.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has already
resigned and his fellow hardliner Bezalel Smotrich has also
opposed the deal and said he has been reassured that it is not
the end of the war.
The Israel Democracy Institute said its latest Israeli Voice
Index, conducted just before the deal was agreed, found 57.5% of
Israelis in favour of a comprehensive agreement that would see
all hostages back in return for ending the war. Twelve percent
supported a partial hostage release in return for a temporary
ceasefire.
Amid the mix of emotions, for some, a sense of exhaustion
outweighed any concerns about 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,"
said Shlomi Elkayam, who owns a business in Sderot. "There are
pros and cons, but in the end we are tired of it all. We are
tired and we want everyone here at home."
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