The Palestinian militant group Hamas handed four female Israeli soldier hostages over to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on Saturday. Hours later, Israeli authorities said they released 200 Palestinian prisoners and detainees as part of the Gaza ceasefire deal aimed at ending the 15-month-old war in Gaza.
The four soldiers who were freed were led onto a podium in Gaza City amid a large crowd of Palestinians and surrounded by dozens of armed members of Hamas. The women waved and smiled before being led off, entering ICRC vehicles that transported them to Israeli forces. The Israeli military said it received the four in Gaza.
The soldiers — Karina Ariev, Daniela Gilboa, Naama Levy and Liri Albag — were all stationed at an observation post on the edge of Gaza and abducted by Hamas fighters who overran their base during the attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Video of their abduction aired in May and showed the five conscripts, pajama-clad and stunned and some bloodied, being bound and bundled into a jeep. The footage was recovered from bodycams worn by gunmen who attacked the Nahal Oz base in southern Israel where the women served as surveillance spotters.
After being reunited with their families at an Israeli military base near the Gaza border, the released hostages were to be taken to a hospital in central Israel, the Israeli Health Ministry said.
Hamas said the 200 Palestinians who were part of the exchange include members of Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), some serving life sentences. Egyptian state-run TV reported that Israel released about 70 of the Palestinians into Egypt.
The ICRC transferred 128 of the detainees to Gaza and the West Bank, the organization said. A convoy of Red Cross buses carrying some of the released Palestinians could be seen leaving Ofer military prison in the West Bank.
Saturday’s exchange was the second since the ceasefire began last Sunday and Hamas handed over three Israeli civilians in exchange for 90 Palestinian prisoners.
Emily Damari, 28, Doron Steinbrecher, 31, and Romi Gonen, 24, were the first three Israeli hostages released from Gaza on Sunday. Gonen was abducted from the Nova music festival, while the others were kidnapped from Kibbutz Kfar Aza.
The ceasefire agreement, worked out after months of on-off negotiations brokered by Qatar and Egypt and backed by the United States, has halted the fighting for the first time since a truce that lasted just a week in November 2023.
Hamas not following release plan, Israel says
After Saturday’s release, Israeli military spokesperson Avichay Adraee said in a post on X that Hamas did not abide with the ceasefire agreement to release Israeli civilians first. Israel had been expecting the release of Arbel Yehoud, one of the civilians held hostage, on Saturday.
Israel won’t allow Palestinians to cross into northern Gaza until Yehoud is released, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. Israel had been expected to begin pulling back from the Netzarim corridor — an east-west road dividing Gaza — and allowing displaced Palestinians in the south to return north for the first time since the war began.
“We are determined to return Arbel Yehoud, an Israeli citizen kidnapped from Nir Oz (kibbutz), and also Shiri Bibas and her two children, Kfir and Ariel, whose welfare we are extremely concerned about,” Israel’s military spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said.
A Hamas official told Reuters that Yehoud is alive and will be released next Saturday.
One of the displaced Palestinians waiting to return to northern Gaza is 53-year-old Suhair Bakr. She told CBC News that her only son died in the war soon after she left her home in Gaza City. She doesn’t know where he’s buried.
She said the exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisioners is “not a victory,” considering how many homes and families have been destroyed in Gaza.
“Our victory is that we are going home, even if our homes are destroyed, despite us knowing that there’s nothing to rebuild,” Bakr said. “No water, no electricity, no homes.”
Mahmoud Al-Zain, who was also waiting on Saturday near Gaza City for a chance to return, said his house was bombed on the eighth day of the war.
“We didn’t even dream that we would go back,” the 48-year-old said.
“We have family in the north in Gaza … our entire childhood was in Gaza. We can’t live without Gaza,” he said.
In the first six-week phase of the deal, Hamas has agreed to release 33 hostages, including children, women, older men and the sick and injured, in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, while Israeli troops pull back from some of their positions in the Gaza Strip.
In a subsequent phase, the two sides would negotiate the exchange of the remaining hostages, including men of military age, and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, which lies largely in ruins after 15 months of fighting and Israeli bombardment.
Israel launched its campaign in Gaza following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, when militants killed 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies. Since then, more than 47,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to health authorities there.
After the release last Sunday of hostages Romi Gonen, Emily Damari and Doron Steinbrecher and the recovery of the body of an Israeli soldier missing for a decade, Israel says 94 Israelis and foreigners remain held in Gaza, though it is unclear how many of them are still alive.