Four Israeli hostages are released by Hamas in the second Gaza swap agreement

As part of a truce agreement to end the 15-month-old conflict in Gaza, the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas freed four female Israeli army hostages on Saturday in exchange for almost 200 Palestinian inmates.

With scores of armed Hamas members surrounding them, the four were taken onto a stage in Gaza City in front of a sizable Palestinian throng. After grinning and waving, they were escorted away, loaded into ICRC vans, and driven to Israeli soldiers.

The soldiers, Karina Ariev, Daniella Gilboa, Naama Levy, and Liri Albag, were all assigned to an observation post on the outskirts of Gaza. On October 7, 2023, Hamas gunmen overran their outpost and kidnapped them.

When their parents saw them on TV, watching the handover live from a neighboring military installation across the border, they cheered and clapped. While it was shown on a huge screen, hundreds of Israelis gathered in Tel Aviv’s so-called Hostages Square, sobbing, hugging, and celebrating.

The military reported that they were shortly reunited with their family, and the Israeli Health Ministry stated that they will be sent to a hospital located in central Israel.

A female civilian captive who was supposed to be released on Saturday was not, however, and this disappointment overshadowed the pleasure in Israel.

October 7, 2023, saw the kidnapping of 29-year-old Arbel Yehud and her partner from their Kibbutz Nir Oz home.

It was a violation of the truce, according to an Israeli military spokesperson, although Hamas said it was a technical glitch. She is alive and will be released next Saturday, according to a Hamas official who said the organization had told mediators.

According to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, unless the problem is fixed, Gazans will not be permitted to return to the northern portion of the region.

The battle had forced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to flee northern Gaza, and many of them were hoping to return on Sunday.

According to a Palestinian official who spoke to Reuters, the mediators were trying to resolve the issue.

POWS

According to Hamas, the swap would include the release of 200 inmates on Saturday. Among them are convicted militants who have been given life sentences for their roles in assaults that claimed the lives of several people. About 70 will be deported, according to Hamas.

Shortly after the release of the Israeli captives, buses transporting the inmates were observed leaving the occupied West Bank’s Ofer military prison.

The scheduled swap on Saturday will be the second since Hamas released three Israeli women civilians in return for 90 Palestinian inmates while a truce was established on January 19.

For the first time since a one-week truce in November 2023, the violence has ceased thanks to the ceasefire deal, which was negotiated over several months with support from the United States and mediated by Qatar and Egypt.

Hamas has promised to free 33 hostages, including women, children, elderly men, and the ill and injured, in return for hundreds of Palestinian inmates in Israeli jails within the first six weeks of the agreement. This is happening while Israeli soldiers withdraw from part of their positions in the Gaza Strip.

The two parties would then discuss the release of the remaining prisoners, including military-age males, and the evacuation of Israeli soldiers from Gaza, which is mostly in ruins following 15 months of shelling and conflict.

Ninety captives are still in Gaza after being freed on Saturday, and Israeli officials have proclaimed around a third of them dead in absentia.

Fearing that their loved ones would be left behind, families of hostages excluded from the first phase fear that the truce may collapse before it reaches the subsequent phases.

Israel’s war in Gaza began after the Oct. 7 Hamas raid, in which terrorists murdered 1,200 people and, according to Israeli estimates, abducted over 250 hostages to Gaza. More than 47,000 Palestinians have died in Gaza since then, according to the region’s health authority.

Israel has lost almost 400 soldiers in the fighting in Gaza. How many fighters Hamas has lost has not been disclosed. Israel says that militants are responsible for about one-third of Gaza’s fatalities.