This was the moment the Israelis had been longing for. On Sunday afternoon, 471 days after they were kidnapped by Hamas in the darkest hour in Israel's history, three young hostages made an arduous journey from prison in Gaza to freedom in their homeland.
The release of the three women – Romi Gonen, Emilie Damari, and Doron Steinbrecher – marked the beginning of a multi-stage deal that offers a chance to end the brutal war in Gaza, and the hope of freedom for dozens of other hostages after more than 15 months in detention. Torment for them, their families, and the country.
But the Israelis' joy and relief at his release is tinged with pain over what will be revealed in the coming weeks. Israeli officials believe that at least half of the remaining 94 hostages are dead. Many doubt that the fragile truce will last long enough for everyone to return.
“There's this dichotomy between this state of mind where this might be the last day (of life) for a spouse or child — and the possibility that the same person will be sleeping in the next room by next week,” says Uday Goren. His family is awaiting the return of the body of his cousin Tal Haimi, who was killed on October 7 and then transferred to Gaza.
“I don't think words can describe the huge contrast between these two feelings.”
For the past fifteen months, the fate of the hostages has remained etched in the Israeli national consciousness. Their faces from happy times have been plastered and re-pasted on buildings and billboards from Haifa to Eilat. Details of their lives fill the daily newscast. Marches demanding that the government take action to secure their release have become weekly events.
But as the truce approached this weekend, along with hopes that at least some would be released, there were reminders of how volatile the situation is. Missiles coming from Yemen set off air raid sirens across the country. In Tel Aviv, a Palestinian stabbed an Israeli before a bystander shot him dead.
Meanwhile, Israeli warplanes continued to bomb Gaza into Sunday morning, bringing the death toll in the devastated enclave since the deal was announced last week to more than 140, according to Palestinian officials.
“There is a glimmer of hope, but it is not the light at the end of the tunnel,” Daria Giladi said as she and a friend joined a march to support the hostages in downtown Jerusalem on Saturday evening.
“You are happy that people are returning home, and you are happy that the war will end, even if for a short time. But there is still a long way to go. Only a third of the hostages are supposed to return (in the first six weeks of the deal). So it is not enough.”
Even for the relatives of the 33 hostages scheduled to be released in the first phase of the deal – when children, women, the sick and the elderly are released – the uncertainty is acute.
Sharon Lifshitz's parents, Yocheved and Oded, who have long advocated coexistence with the Palestinians, were arrested on October 7. Yocheved was released after 17 days. But the family has no idea about Oded's fate. When Yocheved returned, she told her family that he had died. But hostages who were released a few weeks later in a truce in November 2023 said they saw him alive.
And so, for the past 15 months, the family has waited, hoping for Oded's safe return, while grappling with the enormity of what it might mean for a frail octogenarian who was injured in the wrist during a Hamas attack to survive so long in Hamas captivity. .
“We're all fighting for him, thinking we want him back until we know otherwise. If he holds his fate and his strength, and finds a way to survive against all odds, we can't wait to see him,” Lifshitz says in her arresting voice.
“(But) he saw the destruction of everything he fought for. And then he had to be in the hands of the people who caused (that destruction). And he had to somehow survive when his health wasn't strong and he got injured. It's very hard to wish that on anyone.” , not to mention the father she loves so much.
For families whose relatives are not scheduled to be released until the second and third phases of the deal — when the remaining living male hostages are returned, and then the bodies of those who died — the uncertainty is even greater.
When the previous seven-day truce and hostage-prisoner exchange was implemented in November 2023, and 110 of the 250 hostages originally held were freed, many in Israel hoped it would lead to more such deals, and that the remaining hostages would be returned. Soon too.
But what followed was 14 months of false dawns, as Israel and Hamas repeatedly failed to reach an agreement, and the number of living hostages steadily dwindled. Claims by far-right ministers in Benjamin Netanyahu's government that they repeatedly thwarted the agreement angered relatives of the hostages. It left those with relatives not scheduled for release until the second or third stage for fear their time would never come.
Among them is Herut Nimrodi, whose then 18-year-old son Tamir, barefoot and without glasses, was kidnapped from his military base near the Erez crossing in the first hours of the Hamas attack.
Nimrodi knows the exact time of their last message – 6:49 a.m. – when Tamir called her and said that missiles were falling at the base. The family discovered that he had been detained when one of their daughters saw a video on Instagram. But in the months that followed they had no indication of his condition. In November, they celebrated his twentieth birthday without knowing whether he had turned nineteen“.
Al-Nimrodi says: “I know that my son’s name is not on the list (for release in the first stage), because he is a soldier, and we are terrified.” “My fear is not only that we will not get to the next stage. But also (once the first group is released) the pressure (to release more) will become much smaller, because there will be fewer hostages, and they are only men.
There is also widespread recognition that return, even for those who have returned, will be just the first step. Lifshitz says her mother is coping “better than most of us” with her return from prison.
But for those who have spent more than 15 months in captivity, the process is likely to be much more difficult. Previously released hostages have spoken of being held in cages or in complete darkness, being drugged and beaten, and in some cases suffering or witnessing sexual assaults.
Hagai Levin, a doctor who works at a forum that supports hostage families, said at a news conference last week that he expected “every aspect of (the hostages') physical and mental health will be affected.” He added: “Time is of the essence. Recovery will be a long and painful process.”
But despite all the anxiety about the challenges ahead, families are desperate to start the process. “Everyone in Israel – and of course families – needs closure. We are a wounded society right now. We are in shock. “We haven't started the post-traumatic stress phase yet,” Nimrodi says. “We need to heal. Seeing the hostages returned is a healing process for us as a society.”
Lifshitz agrees. “We know that a lot of the hostages are not alive and we will have a fair number of funerals and periods of mourning to go through,” she says. “But at least there will be some kind of closure. We will know. At least we will know.”
