Who are the four Israeli hostages who will be released on Saturday January 25? – Liberation

Who are the four Israeli hostages who will be released on Saturday January 25? – Liberation
Who are the four Israeli hostages who will be released on Saturday January 25? – Liberation

Hamas revealed the names, this Friday, January 24, of the four new hostages who are to be released on Saturday, as part of the ceasefire agreement obtained with Israel: Karina Ariev, Daniella Gilboa, Naama Levy and Liri Albag . These four soldiers, kidnapped on October 7, 2023 from the Nahal Oz military base, will be returned to their families. Three are 20 years old, the fourth 19 years old. The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately confirmed having received this list.

This exchange is the second of this type since the truce came into force last Sunday. Three Israeli hostages and 90 Palestinian prisoners held in Israel were released that day. This time, the four women will be released in exchange for 180 Palestinians. They had all been kidnapped from the Nahal Oz military base, on the border with Gaza. During the October 7 attack on this unit, fifteen IDF “lookouts” were killed and seven kidnapped. If one of them, Ori Megidish, 18 years old, was released during an Israeli army operation on October 29, 2023, Noa Marciano, 19 years old, was found dead in November 2023.

With the release of these four soldiers, only Agam Berger, 20 years old, remains, the last woman in the Israeli army still in the hands of the Palestinian movement. Two other civilian women, Arbel Yehoud and Shiri Bibas, are still being held by Hamas, but are on the list of 33 hostages to be released in the coming weeks.

Karina Ariev, 20 years olds

Little information circulated in the Israeli media about Karina Ariev, before she was kidnapped by Hamas on October 7 with six other soldiers. On Facebook, the October 7 collective shared some anecdotes about the young woman’s personality. “She loves doing very complicated puzzles,” “she speaks four languages ​​fluently”, “she really likes children and used to babysit”, “she loves driving and got her license on the first try”, can we read on the publication accompanied by various photos of Karina Ariev in her everyday life. Only one video attested to her survival of the terrorist attack carried out by Hamas on her military base, published in January 2024, where she appeared, captive, alongside Daniella Gilboa.

Daniella Gilboa, 20 ans

In this famous video dating from January 2024, broadcast by Hamas as it has done several times with hostages for propaganda purposes, the young woman, potentially under duress, severely criticizes the Israeli government: “Where were you on October 7 when I was taken from my bed? Where are you now ? Why leave me, who served in difficult conditions in the Gaza border region? Why must I feel abandoned and rejected by you again? Pull yourself together, to bring us all home, while we’re alive.” She adds: “I don’t need food, money, clothes or anything else, just for you to bring us home alive”. Alongside him in the video are Karina Ariev and Doron Steinbrecher.

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Liri Albag, 19 years old

“My Liri has always been confident, fearless, strong”said on January 10, her mother, Shira Albag, urging the Israeli government to obtain the release of the young soldier. Abducted on October 7 with her comrades, she had not given any sign of life before the broadcast of a video, on January 4, 2025, in which she appears in tears, head in her hands. Like her mother, she called on her nation to act for her liberation. “I saw that she was extremely pale, that she had lost a lot, a lot of weight… I saw blackness under her eyes, I saw that she had not seen the light of day since a long time”, her mother said after seeing the video of her captive daughter.

Naama Levy, 20 ans

On the day of her kidnapping, October 7, she sent a last text message to her mother at 6:55 a.m.: “We are in a secure room”. “I’ve never heard anything like it in my entire life,” she adds, describing the salvos of rockets and gunshots fired outside. A few hours later, she appeared in a Hamas video posted on Telegram. We see Naama, taken violently by the hair from a Jeep in Gaza, her hands tied behind her back, her gray jogging pants stained with what appears to be blood, her bare feet, pushed under the jeers of chanting passers-by “God is great!” in Arabic. Conditions of detention which had been widely denounced by the Israeli authorities.

Herself the great-granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, Naama Levy has the distinction of having participated in the “Hands of Peace” project in the United States, where young Americans, Israelis and Palestinians met to promote the values ​​of cooperation and peace between the two camps.

Update : at 5 p.m., with more context on the identity of the four hostages.

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