By Hussam al-Masri, Maayan Lubell and Nidal al-Mughrabi
GAZA/JERUSALEM/CAIRO (Reuters) -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 deal 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 News 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 deployed in central Gaza as it handed hostages over to the International Committee of the Red Cross. They were then driven in ICRC vehicles to Israeli forces.
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.
PALESTINIANS COMPLAIN OF ILL-TREATMENT
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.
In Ramallah, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, a bus carrying 42 freed Palestinian prisoners was welcomed by a cheering crowd.
Among those freed 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.
Many of the prisoners freed appeared in poor health and some complained of ill-treatment. “The occupation humiliated us for over a year,” said Shkaidem.
The Palestinian Red Crescent medical service said they have taken six of the 42 released prisoners to hospitals.
The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity during the conflict.
Rights groups have reported grave abuses of Palestinians in Israeli detention since the start of the Gaza war. The Israeli military is investigating several cases of alleged abuse but rejects allegations of systematic abuse within its detention facilities.
PAINFUL RETURN
Some hostages face a painful return. Sharabi’s two teenage daughters and his British-born wife were slain in the Hamas attack on Kibbutz Be’eri, where one in 10 residents was killed. Levy will be reunited with his three-year-old son after losing his wife in the attack.
The exchange is the latest in a series of swaps that have so far returned 13 Israeli and five Thai hostages and released 583 Palestinian prisoners and detainees.
Despite hiccups, the first 42-day phase of the ceasefire mediated by Washington, Cairo and Doha, has held since it took effect on January 19.
But fears the deal might collapse before all the hostages are free have grown since U.S. President Donald Trump’s surprise call for Palestinians to be moved from Gaza and for the enclave to be handed to the United States and developed into the “Riviera of the Middle East”.
Arab states and Palestinian groups have rejected Trump’s proposal, which critics said would amount to ethnic cleansing. Hamas said on Saturday that its armed display at the hostage handover demonstrated it could not be excluded from post-war Gaza arrangements.
Netanyahu, however, welcomed Trump’s intervention and his defence minister ordered the military to make plans to allow Palestinians who wished to leave Gaza to do so.
Under the ceasefire deal, 33 Israeli children, women and sick, wounded and older men are to be released during the first stage in exchange for almost 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees.
Negotiations on a second phase began this week aimed at returning the remaining hostages and agreeing a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza in preparation for a final end to the war.
Hamas-led gunmen attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and seizing more than 250 as hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
In response, Israel launched an air and ground war in Gaza that has killed more than 47,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities, and devastated much of the enclave.
(Additional reporting by Ali Sawafta in Ramallah, Andrew Mills in Doha, Leonardo Benassatt in Ganei Tikva and Yigal Elimelech in Hod Hasharon; Writing by James Mackenzie and Maayan Lubell; Editing by Alistair Bell, David Evans and Alex Richardson)
