Israeli television has shown images of three hostages handed over to the Red Cross as part of a ceasefire agreement ending a 15-month war that has wrought devastation and seismic political changes across the Middle East.
The Israeli military said the hostages, held by Hamas militants since October 7, 2023, then passed in vehicles to Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet security officials in Gaza before being transported to southern Israel.
The Red Cross said the hostages were in good health. A large crowd gathered in a public square in Tel Aviv, Israel, to watch a screen showing scenes from the start of the transfer in Gaza City.
US President Joe Biden said on his last day in office in Charleston, South Carolina, that “the guns have fallen silent” in Gaza under the six-week ceasefire agreement he outlined in May that calls for the release of a total of 33 hostages in exchange against Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.
Israeli officials said they did not know whether all 33 of those hostages were alive.
Early Sunday, Hamas released the names of the first hostages released, identifying them as Romi Gonen, Doron Steinbrecher and Emily Damari.
About 90 Palestinians from the West Bank and Jerusalem held in Israeli prisons were due to be released on Sunday. Of these, 69 are women.
One of the groups representing the families of the hostages in Gaza, the Hostage and Missing Families Forum, said it welcomed the news that the three women would be released.
In a statement issued two hours after the ceasefire deadline, Hamas said it had sent the list of names and Israeli officials confirmed receipt. Hamas named the hostages selected for release as Romi Gonen, Doron Steinbrecher and Emily Damari.
Steinbrecher, 31, and Damari, a 28-year-old dual Israeli-British citizen, were abducted from their homes in Kibbutz Kfar Aza in southern Israel. Gonen, 24, comes from the city of Kfar Vradim in northern Israel and was kidnapped from the Nova music festival in the desert near the Gaza-Israel border.
On Sunday, guards could be seen outside the Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan on the outskirts of Tel Aviv, where the women were to be examined.
A ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip came into force on Sunday after a nearly three-hour delay, ending a 15-month war that has wrought devastation and seismic political shifts across the Middle East.
Fighting in the Gaza Strip ceased on Sunday as the ceasefire agreement between Israel and the Palestinian militant group came into effect after a brief delay. Residents and a medical worker in Gaza said they had not heard any new fighting or military strikes for about half an hour before the final implementation.
Israeli airstrikes, artillery and tank attacks in northern Gaza continued past the original deadline of 8 a.m. local time, Gaza-based medics said. At least 13 Palestinians were killed and dozens more injured before the ceasefire actually came into force about three hours later. The Israeli military said it carried out air and artillery strikes against “terror targets.”
Israel blamed Hamas for the delay after the Palestinian militant group failed to provide a list of the names of the first three hostages within the deadline set in the deal.
A Palestinian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, blamed ongoing Israeli air and ground bombings for the delay, saying it had made it physically difficult to send the list to mediators.
Canadian Maureen Leshem speaks to The National about waiting for the release of her cousin Romi Gonen, who was kidnapped by Hamas from the Nova Music Festival in Israel on October 7, 2023.
It is hoped the much-anticipated 42-day ceasefire agreement will pave the way for an end to the war that has sparked a wave of fighting across the Middle East, with Israel and its Western and US allies largely pitted against Iran and the Tehran-backed paramilitary groups, including Hamas, Lebanese Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen and Iraqi militias.
Hamas, which controls the besieged coastal enclave of Gaza, sparked the war by attacking towns in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages. Most of them have now been released or killed.
Another 400 Israeli soldiers were killed in fighting in the Gaza Strip.
Nearly 47,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s bombing of the Gaza Strip in retaliation against Hamas, according to Gaza-based health authorities. They include thousands of Hamas fighters and the group’s top military leaders, but the U.N. human rights office says most of the deaths it has reviewed are women and children.
The attack has destroyed the territory’s infrastructure and left almost all of its 2.3 million residents homeless.
Hostages for prisoners
The Gaza ceasefire agreement calls for the gradual release of dozens of hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza in return for Israel’s release of hundreds of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.
For every hostage released, Israel is supposed to release 30 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. The releases are part of the first phase of the deal, in which 33 of the remaining 98 hostages in Gaza – women, children, men over 50, the sick and wounded – will be released within six weeks in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.
The Palestinians held include 737 men, women and teenagers, some of whom are members of militant groups convicted of attacks that killed dozens of Israelis, as well as hundreds of Gazan Palestinians who have been detained since the war began.
Aid is flowing, Palestinians are returning home
In another part of the ceasefire agreement, Israeli forces began withdrawing from areas in Gaza’s Rafah Strip to the Philadelphi Corridor along the Egypt-Gaza border, pro-Hamas media reported early Sunday.
Long lines of trucks carrying fuel and aid lined up at border crossings in the hours before the ceasefire took effect. The World Food Program said its trucks began crossing the intersection Sunday morning.
The agreement calls for 600 truckloads of aid to be allowed into the Gaza Strip on each day of the first six-week ceasefire, including 50 of fuel. Half of the 600 aid trucks would be delivered to northern Gaza, where experts have warned of impending famine.
Palestinians displaced by the fighting were seen returning to Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, including 26-year-old Mohamed Abdo.
“I want to see my home; it’s all dust,” he told CBC News. “We were in misery for a year and three months, humiliated and expelled, not just to one place but to ten places.”
The three-stage agreement follows months of negotiations between Egypt, Qatar and the United States and comes just before the inauguration of US President-elect Donald Trump on January 20.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a televised address on Saturday that his government viewed the ceasefire with Hamas as temporary and retained the “right to return to fighting.”
The war sent shockwaves across the region, sparking conflict with the Tehran-backed Lebanese Hezbollah movement and bringing Israel into direct conflict with its arch-enemy Iran for the first time.
It also changed the Middle East. Iran, which has spent billions building a network of militant groups around Israel, has seen its “Axis of Resistance” destroyed and failed to inflict more than minimal damage on Israel in two major rocket attacks.
Hezbollah, whose vast missile arsenal was once considered Israel’s greatest threat, has seen its top leadership killed and most of its missiles and military infrastructure destroyed.
