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The deal to halt the war between Israel and Hamas and free hostages still held in Gaza has given families exhausted by more than a year of waiting a glimmer of hope they may finally see their loved ones again.
But the hope is only part of the story. Many families of hostages seized from Israel by Hamas on October 7 2023 have no idea what condition their relatives are in, or even whether they are alive. And even those who have indications that their relatives have survived this far do not know whether the deal will hold long enough for them to be freed.
“These truly are probably the most stressful days we’ve experienced in over a year,” Udi Goren — whose cousin Tal Haimi was killed defending kibbutz Nir Yitzhak from the attack by Hamas, which took his body to Gaza — told a press conference on Thursday.
Under the deal mediated by the US, Qatar and Egypt, the final details of which were still being thrashed out on Thursday, the 98 hostages still in captivity — not all of whom are alive — will be released in three phases.
The agreement follows months of failed attempts to reach a deal, during which the fate of the captives has become one of the most emotive issues in Israeli society. It has drawn tens of thousands of people on to the streets in support of the hostages, whose relatives have campaigned relentlessly for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to strike a deal for their freedom.
In the first six-week period of the agreement — which Netanyahu’s cabinet will meet on Friday to discuss — 33 hostages including children, women, the sick and the elderly will be freed in exchange for the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails. In the second phase, the remaining living male hostages will be released, and in the third, the bodies of the remaining hostages will be returned.
The structure means that even families whose relatives are due to be released in the first phase may face an agonising wait of up to six weeks.
But for families whose relatives are not scheduled to be released until the latter phases, the uncertainty is greater still, as those two stages are predicated on Israel and Hamas agreeing to a permanent end to the war, something the far-right members of Netanyahu’s coalition fervently oppose.
“There is nothing I would like to see more than these people, my new extended family, get their loved ones back, get their lives back, stop this excruciating suffering day in and day out,” Goren said of the other hostage families.
“On the other hand, for us, the ones not included in part one, this is not the end of the road. This is just the beginning of a new phase of our struggle.”
Joshua Hantman, who helped set up a forum representing hostage families, said that the families and the “whole country” were gearing up for “another period of torture”.
“Even for those families on the list [for the first phase] this isn’t a period of unbridled joy,” he said. “It’s a period of worry with a small slice of hope.”
“It’s just incredible uncertainty, after 469 days of agonising pain . . . There have been reports of people being kept in tunnels for the whole time, of people being kept in cages. No one knows what state they are in.”
Hamas seized 250 hostages during its October 7 assault, more than 100 of whom were released during a brief truce in late 2023. A handful of others have been rescued by Israeli forces. Israeli officials estimate that more than a third of the remaining hostages are no longer alive.
For many relatives, and in particular those of hostages who have died in captivity, the anguish is heightened by the nagging feeling that the deal — the broad outlines of which were first set out by US President Joe Biden in May last year — should have been struck sooner.
Gil Dickmann, whose cousin Carmel Gat was killed last year by Hamas after 11 months in captivity, said the families wanted answers as to why it had taken so long to agree a deal. “The way I see it, the only thing that changed between May and now is that more hostages are dead, including Carmel, and Trump is now president,” he said.
But he said that for now the most important thing was that it be implemented in full. “We demand that all parties involved do everything they can so we get a full deal with all the hostages, because it’s not done until all the hostages are home,” he said. “It’s a good start. It’s the beginning of the end. But it’s not the end until all the hostages are home.”