Hamas on Saturday released four female Israeli soldiers held hostage in the Gaza Strip, in a choreographed ceremony that was the latest sign of the group’s effort to project power despite Israel’s 470-day military campaign to dislodge them.
It was the second release of hostages as part of a cease-fire deal that went into effect nearly a week earlier. Per the agreement, Israel released 200 Palestinian prisoners on Saturday who had been held in Israeli jails.
A line of white buses carrying prisoners left Ofer prison in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Prisoners were also released from another facility near Beersheba in southern Israel, the Israeli prison service said.
Many of the 200 prisoners released on Saturday were serving life sentences for involvement in attacks against Israelis. Around 70 are being exiled abroad as part of the agreement and will not be allowed to return to their homes in the West Bank and Jerusalem, according to a list provided by the Palestinian authorities.
But the prisoner-hostage swap on Saturday did not go entirely to plan. Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, an Israeli military spokesman, accused Hamas of violating the deal by not returning captive Israeli civilians first. Israeli officials said that under the agreement, Arbel Yehud, an Israeli woman held hostage in Gaza, was supposed to be one of the four women released on Saturday.
Israel had been expected to withdraw some of its forces to allow hundreds of thousands of displaced Gazans to head north after Saturday’s exchange. But the Israeli prime minister’s office said that it would not allow Gazans to head north “until the release of the civilian Arbel Yehud has been arranged,” leaving the timing of the troop withdrawal and the residents’ return unclear.
Hamas accused Israel of hesitating to fully implement the cease-fire agreement. The dispute is one of the most significant between the parties since the cease-fire took effect.
Israeli officials said they believed that Ms. Yehud wasn’t being held by Hamas, suggesting she was possibly being held by another party, and that the holdup was not solely Hamas’s responsibility.
The four Israeli hostages released by Hamas on Saturday, who were dressed in military-style clothes, had been working as lookouts for Israel’s army, reporting on suspicious activity across the border, when they were captured. During the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, militants stormed the Nahal Oz military base in Israel, killing more than 50 soldiers and abducting the four women and three other female soldiers.
Under the terms of the cease-fire deal, fighting between the Israeli military and Hamas militants stopped in the morning of Sunday, Jan 19. The first hostages, three women seized in the 2023 attack, were released on Sunday, in exchange for 90 Palestinian prisoners being held in Israel, who were released hours later.
The current phase of the cease-fire is to last just 42 days and free only 33 of about 100 hostages still in Gaza, some of whom are believed to be dead. Significant diplomatic hurdles to extending the cease-fire lie ahead. Israel and Hamas reached the deal in part by putting off their most intractable disputes until a vaguely-described “second phase,” which may be difficult to negotiate.
During the hostage handover ceremony on Saturday, armed Hamas fighters dressed in pristine uniforms, their faces covered, escorted the four hostages to a stage at Palestine Square in the center of Gaza City. Then they were handed over to a representative of the Red Cross.
The stage-managed ceremony, seemingly meant to convey Hamas’ strength and control in Gaza, included some jarring juxtapositions.
The backdrop to the handover was a large banner printed with slogans, one of which described Palestine in English as “The Victory of the Oppressed People vs the Nazi Zionism.”
The ceremony was held in an area devastated by Israel’s bombing campaign and ground incursion, with hundreds of uniformed fighters and civilians gathered nearby. Hamas fighters were showered with confetti.
The hostages incongruously smiled and waved at the cheering and whistling onlookers. In the past, Israeli officials have said that Hamas has forced hostages to appear cheerful to suggest that they were well treated.
Adm. Hagari, the Israeli military spokesman, derided the ceremony as “cynical.”
Hamas “presented a false show of taking care of the hostages, when in fact, it has cruelly held men and women for 477 days,” Adm. Hagari said.
Before the four hostages were released, Hamas held a signing ceremony on the stage, between one of its members and a representative of the Red Cross. The hostages were then driven by the Red Cross to Israeli troops stationed in the territory.
Two Israeli helicopters ferried the hostages to Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva, a city in central Israel, to the excited cheers of hundreds who gathered to welcome their arrival with Israeli flags.
“We wanted to show the hostages and their families how much we care for them,” said Helena Dabush, 42, who lives nearby and brought her four children along.
The released hostages were all teenagers and recent recruits into the military when they were abducted. Karina Ariev, now 20, is the daughter of immigrants from Ukraine; Daniella Gilboa, 20, is an aspiring concert pianist from central Israel; Naama Levy, 20, was a triathlete who grew up in a town north of Tel Aviv; and Liri Albag, 19, is an aspiring architect and interior designer.
There was also jubilation in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, where hundreds of Palestinians gathered at a municipal building to welcome the released Palestinian prisoners and pushed to get hold of their loved ones as they stepped out of Red Cross buses.
Some freed prisoners, still wearing gray uniforms apparently issued by the Israeli prison authority, were held on the shoulders of the chanting crowd.
“We leave our jail but the price is high for our freedom,” Mohammad Arda, one of the freed prisoners, told reporters, as family and friends huddled around him. “I’m thinking about the families of the inmates we lost during the past year and a half.”
The 90 prisoners released nearly a week earlier by Israel were mostly women and minors. This time, the Israeli authorities freed many people who were convicted of much heavier offenses, including the murder of Israeli civilians.
According to the Israeli government, Mr. Arda — an activist in the militant group Palestinian Islamic Jihad — had been sentenced to life for attempted murder and planting an explosive device, among other offenses. He was one of six prisoners who briefly escaped from an Israeli prison in 2021, stunning Israelis and Palestinians, before he was caught.
More than 1,500 Palestinians jailed by Israel are supposed to be released as part of the first stage of the cease-fire and hostage-release agreement. Hamas has pledged to release 33 hostages; 97 — around a third of whom the Israeli military believes are deceased — were being held in Gaza when the deal went into effect last Sunday, according to the Israeli authorities.
About 120 of the Palestinian prisoners released on Saturday were serving life sentences for involvement in attacks on Israelis, according to lists provided by the Hamas-linked prisoners’ office. Those released on Saturday included Mohammad Odeh, Wael Qassim and Wissam Abbasi, who were arrested in 2002 for a string of deadly bombings targeting Israelis in crowded civilian areas. All three were serving life sentences.
One of the group’s most infamous attacks, which took place at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, killed nine people, including five Americans.
The three men are among those slated to be exiled abroad and will never be allowed to return to their homes in Jerusalem, according to the terms of the agreement.
Still uncertain on Saturday was when displaced Palestinians in southern and central Gaza would be able to return to their neighborhoods in the north, many of which were destroyed by Israel’s bombing campaign.
The holdup in the Israeli troop withdrawal left many Palestinians in a state of anxious waiting as they were already packing their belongings, including kitchen supplies, clothing and mattress pads.
“My husband and I have been waiting for this day with so much anticipation, but I can’t help feeling frightened about the great destruction I’ll see on the way back,” said Nour Qasim, 22, originally a resident of Gaza City.
The cease-fire had been brokered by mediators from Qatar, Egypt, and representatives of both the outgoing Biden administration and the incoming Trump administration. It was a rare instance of high-profile cooperation between the two teams, but the difference in how they may regard the conflict became clear on Friday.
The Trump administration said it would proceed with a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel that last summer, then-President Joseph R. Biden Jr. abruptly halted to try to dissuade the Israeli military from destroying much of the city of Rafah, which the Israeli forces did anyway.
The shipment includes 1,800 MK-84 bombs, said a White House official, who agreed to discuss sensitive weapons aid on the condition of anonymity. Such bombs are judged by U.S. military officers to be generally too lethal and destructive for urban combat. Until the halt, the Biden administration had shipped the bombs to Israel as its military fought Hamas in Gaza.
Reporting was contributed by Fatima AbdulKarim, Afif Amireh, Natan Odenheimer, Rawan Sheikh Ahmad, Bilal Shbair, Aritz Parra and Edward Wong.
