Tel Aviv swaps 183 Palestinians for 3 ‘frail’ hostages under ceasefire deal
Palestinian militant group Hamas handed over three Israeli hostages on Saturday, whose gaunt appearance shocked Israelis, while Israel began freeing dozens of Palestinians in the latest stage of a ceasefire aimed at ending the 15-month war in Gaza.
Ohad Ben Ami and Eli Sharabi, both taken hostage from Kibbutz Be’eri during the cross-border Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023, and Or Levy, abducted that day from the Nova music festival, were led onto a Hamas podium by gunmen.
The three men all appeared thin, weak and pale, and in worse condition than the 18 hostages who had previously been freed under the truce agreed last month.
“He looked like a skeleton, it was awful to see,” Ohad Ben Ami’s mother-in-law, Michal Cohen, told Channel 13 as she watched the Hamas-directed handover ceremony, which included the hostages answering questions posed by a masked man as militants armed with automatic rifles stood on each side.
In another show of force by Hamas, which has paraded fighters during previous releases, dozens of its militants were deployed in central Gaza as it handed hostages over to the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The hostages were then driven in ICRC cars to Israeli forces and into Israel, where they were reunited in smiles and tears with family members and flown to hospitals. “We missed you so much,” the mother of Or Levy, Geula, said as she hugged her son.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the sight of the frail hostages was shocking and would be addressed.
Israel’s President Isaac Herzog described the release ceremony as cynical and vicious. “This is what a crime against humanity looks like,” he said.
The Hostage Families Forum said the images of the three hostages evoked images of survivors of Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust. “We have to get ALL THE HOSTAGES out of hell,” it said.
In exchange for the hostages’ release, Israel is freeing 183 Palestinian prisoners, some convicted of involvement in attacks that killed dozens of people, as well as 111 detained in Gaza during the war. Cheering crowds greeted the buses as they arrived in Gaza, embracing the freed detainees as they disembarked, some of them weeping with joy and tearing prison-issued bracelets off their wrists.
Among those freed in Ramallah, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, was Eyad Abu Shkaidem, sentenced to 18 life terms in Israel for masterminding suicide attacks in revenge for Israel’s 2004 assassinations of Hamas leaders.
Today, I am reborn, “Shkaidem told reporters upon arrival in Ramallah, as the crowd cheered.
The Palestinian Red Crescent medical service said six of the 42 released in the West Bank were in poor health and were taken to hospitals.
