Israeli hostages in the enclave after October 7: the results today

After more than a year of an unprecedented deluge of fire on the largely devastated Gaza Strip, a truce between Hamas and Israel, negotiated under the aegis of Qatar and the United States, came into force on Sunday January 19. Pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, exerted by President Donald Trump, who took office on January 20, would have made it possible to put an end to months of fruitless negotiations, according to observers. Growing internal and international pressure to free the hostages would also have played a role in changing the position of the most right-wing head of government in the history of the State of Israel, who would today see in the release of hostages a political interest.

In the terms of the ceasefire agreement, the release of hostages is therefore central. The Orient-The Day returns on this occasion to the assessment concerning the 255 Israeli hostages present in the Gaza Strip after October 7, 2023, between people released, killed, returned to Israel alive or dead, or foreigners.

94 hostages still present: 34 dead… and more?

To date, 94 hostages are still in the Gaza Strip, according to a count by the Haaretz. Thirty-four of them were declared dead by the Israeli army, while the state of health of the others remains unknown. In addition to the Israelis and dual nationals, there are still 8 Thais (foreign workers in Israel, two of whom were confirmed dead on May 17, 2024), a Nepalese (agricultural student) and a Tanzanian (a student in agronomy, killed on October 7).

The first phase of the agreement provides for the release of 33 sick women, children and men aged over 50 (in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners) over a period of 42 days. On the first day of the agreement, this Sunday, three young women were released.

Notably, two of the captives who will be released in this first phase had been held in the Palestinian enclave for ten years already: Abera Mengistu, of Ethiopian origin and Hicham al-Sayed, an Arab citizen of Israel of Bedouin origin, captured respectively in 2014 and 2015, after entering Gaza on their own. Only one other hostage, an Israeli captured and killed during the 2014 war, is in this situation among the 255 hostages (hence the figure of 252 hostages given in some media).

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An important wait also concerns the Bibas family, whose release is also planned for the first phase: Shiri Bibas, 32 years old, and Yarden Bibas, 34 years old, were captured with their children, Kir (2 years old) and Ariel (5 years old). ).

After 16 days, negotiations for the second phase would begin and would focus on the release of the remaining hostages (in exchange for Israeli withdrawal to a sort of buffer zone). Finally, the third phase provides for the release of the deceased hostages (in exchange for the supervision of the reconstruction of the enclave by Egypt, Qatar and the United Nations).

The central question, in addition to the real or not desire of the Israeli government to observe the three phases of the agreement, and the questioning of the merits of such a distribution, remains that of the number of hostages still alive.

112 hostages released alive by Hamas

Among the 112 hostages released by the Palestinian movement, 105 were released during the ceasefire week from November 24 to 30, 2023, 7 weeks after the start of the conflict. Intense daily negotiations made it possible to implement the agreement according to which one Israeli hostage was to be released (at that time, only women and children) in exchange for three Palestinian detainees. This is how 240 Palestinians were released, and 81 Israeli or binational hostages. In addition, 23 Thais were released outside this framework, as well as a Filipino.

Before this week of ceasefire, four hostages had been released for humanitarian reasons: two American women on October 20, and two elderly women on October 23.

The other three are the women released this Sunday, as part of the second ceasefire agreement signed in 15 months.

8 live hostages recovered during military operations

Only eight hostages have been rescued by the Israeli army in the Gaza enclave since October 7, in four separate operations, while the Israeli government has continued to preach a release of the hostages, urged by one party from the Israeli street, by force.

Thus, an Israeli soldier was released on October 30, 2023; two people aged 70 were released in Rafah on February 12 (in an operation that hit 14 homes and three mosques and killed more than 100 people Hamas Health Ministry); four captives were released from the Nousseirat refugee camp on June 8 (in an operation that killed 274 Palestinians, including more than 60 children, according to the enclave’s Ministry of Health); and finally a member of Israel’s Bedouin minority, Farhan al-Qadi, was found on August 27 in a tunnel in the south of the Gaza Strip.

41 hostages recovered dead

Among the 158 people returned to Israel, 41 hostages died. When Hamas frequently attributes the deaths of hostages to indiscriminate Israeli bombings in civilian areas, the latter defends itself by accusing Hamas members of killing the hostages before the Israeli army could free them. These reciprocal accusations were particularly audible when the Israeli army found the bodies of six hostages in a tunnel on August 31.

On January 3, the Israeli army confirmed the death of a hostage, Sahar Baruch, 25, during a rescue operation on December 8, itself acknowledging that he may have been killed by Israeli fire, what Hamas accused it of as early as December 9.

The most publicized case was the killing of three hostages by the Israeli army “by mistake” on December 15, while they were on the run and one of them explicitly requested help from a group of soldiers of his army, present in the Choujaiya district. Hearing shouts in Hebrew, the Israeli army said it thought it was “a ruse” by Hamas.