2023-11-25 12:00:15
An Israeli helicopter carrying freed hostages lands at the Schneider medical center in Tel Aviv (Israel), November 24, 2023. FADEL SENNA/AFP
Finally ! After forty-nine days of uncertainty, rumors, poignant pain and false joy, the families of twenty-four of the 240 hostages kidnapped by Hamas on October 7 were able to reunite with their loved ones on Friday, November 24. With them, the Israelis held their breath on this Shabbat day, following the progress of this long-awaited event hour by hour. Until the moment when, at the very beginning of the evening, they saw this video, taken from very far away in the dark night: a bus slowly crossing the high barbed wire border which separates Israel from Egypt, followed by a procession of Red Cross ambulances.
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Less than 200 kilometers away, thirty-nine Palestinian prisoners (twenty-four women and fifteen teenagers) were released from Ofer prison, near Ramallah, under the agreement concluded by Israel with Hamas: exchange of fifty hostages for one hundred and fifty Palestinian prisoners, the provision of humanitarian aid and a four-day break in the fighting.
As soon as the first images were broadcast, the crowd burst into relief on the square of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, renamed « Place des otages” since it became the center of demonstrations in support of the relatives of the captives. A storm of applause accompanied the projection, on the wall of the museum transformed into a giant screen, of photos of the thirteen freed Israelis, four children, their mothers and six elderly women.
Tears are still flowing
Among them, Chana Katzir, 76, whose death the Palestinian armed group Islamic Jihad announced in a video in early November. The foreigners, ten Thais and one Filipino, were the subject of separate negotiations, separate from those carried out by the Israeli government. Four of the Thais had never been officially counted as hostages. According to the American daily New York Times, the Filipino citizen who accompanied them, mistaken for one of their own, was apparently released by mistake. No American or French nationals were among these first released – a way for Hamas to encourage Washington and Paris to demand from Benyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, an extension of the truce.
Joyful demonstrations in the street, upon the announcement of the release of thirteen Israeli hostages from Hamas, in Tel Aviv (Israel), November 24, 2023. ARIEL SCHALIT/AP
Smiles, then, but behind which many shadows passed. Yoni Asher, whose wife and two daughters, Raz, 4, and Aviv, 2, were part of the first contingent of those released, immediately declared that he would not celebrate their return until all the hostages had returned. How can we forget that just a stone’s throw from the Art Museum, in the Beit Ariela library, where families have been able to gather for several weeks, tears are still flowing?
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