Three Israeli hostages were reunited with their mothers and Palestinians returned to their bombed-out neighborhoods on Sunday (Jan 19) with the start of a ceasefire suspending a 15-month-old war that has devastated Gaza and inflamed the Middle East.
In Tel Aviv, hundreds of Israelis cheered and wept in a square outside the defense headquarters as a live broadcast from Gaza showed the three hostages getting into a Red Cross vehicle surrounded by Hamas fighters.
The Israeli military said Romi Gonen, Doron Steinbrecher, and Emily Damari had been reunited with their mothers and released a video showing them in apparent good health. Damari, who lost two fingers when she was shot the day she was abducted, smiled and embraced her mother as she held up a bandaged hand.
“I would like you to tell them: Romi, Doro,n and Emily – an entire nation embraces you. Welcome home,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a commander by phone.
Sheba Medical Center said all three women were in stable condition. They were among more than 250 people abducted and 1,200 killed in a Hamas raid on Israel on Oct 7, 2023, Israel has said.
More than 47,000 Palestinians have since been killed in Israeli attacks, according to medical officials in Gaza. Nearly the entire 2.3 million population of Gaza is homeless. Around 400 Israeli soldiers have also died.
The truce calls for fighting to stop, aid to be sent into Gaza and 33 of the nearly 100 remaining Israeli and foreign hostages to go free over the six-week first phase in return for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. Many of the hostages are believed to be dead.
Israel’s prison service said early on Monday that 90 Palestinian prisoners have been released as part of the deal.
“All the terrorists were released from Ofer prison and the Jerusalem detention center,” the service said, referring to the Palestinian prisoners, in a statement issued just before 1.30 am.
In the north of the Gaza Strip, Palestinians picked their way through a devastated landscape of rubble and twisted metal that had been bombed into oblivion in the war’s most intense fighting.
“I feel like at last I found some water to drink after being lost in the desert for 15 months,” said Aya, who said she had been displaced from her Gaza City home for more than a year.
In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, buses awaited the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli detention. Hamas said the first group to be freed in exchange for the hostages includes 69 women and 21 teenage boys.
The first phase of the truce took effect following a three-hour delay during which Israeli warplanes and artillery pounded the Gaza Strip.
That last-minute blitz killed 13 people, Palestinian health authorities said. Israel blamed Hamas for being late to deliver the names of hostages it would free, and said it had struck terrorists. Hamas said the holdup in providing the list was technical.
“Today the guns in Gaza have gone silent,” United States President Joe Biden said on his last full day in office, welcoming a truce that had eluded US diplomacy for more than a year.
“It was a long road,” Biden said. “But we’ve reached this point today because of the pressure Israel built on Hamas, backed by the US.”
For Hamas, the truce could provide an opportunity to emerge from the shadows after 15 months in hiding. Hamas policemen dressed in blue police uniforms swiftly deployed in some areas, and armed fighters drove through the southern city of Khan Younis, where a crowd cheered, “Greetings to Al-Qassam Brigades”, the group’s armed wing.
“All the resistance factions are staying despite Netanyahu,” one fighter told Reuters.
