Palestinians in Israel and Hamas are expected to be released within a few days after the Oct. 7 Abduction-Front-Fire
A deal between Israel and Hamas for a temporary cease-fire is expected to go into effect on Friday. The agreement is being mediated by the state of Qatar and it is expected to play out.
The agreement is for at least a four-day pause in hostilities. During that time, at least 50 women and children — from the roughly 240 people that Israeli officials say were abducted on Oct. 7 — would be exchanged for 150 Palestinian women and minors imprisoned in Israeli jails.
However, the deal also includes an increase in aid to Gaza, but no details were released. Each day, 200 trucks with relief supplies and four trucks with fuel would enter the territory, Hamas said. Israeli officials did not immediately comment.
Israel said its warplanes would not fly over southern Gaza for the duration of the cease-fire, and would not fly over the northern part of the territory for six hours each day.
The pause is expected to start on Friday at 7 a.m. Gaza time, according to Majed al-Ansari. The first group of 13 hostages would be released at 4 p.m., in exchange for a number of Palestinian prisoners according to Mr. al-Ansari.
The official said the majority of the Palestinians will be taken by bus to their home districts when they are released from Israeli prisons. It was unclear whether they, too, would be set free in stages, but the official said the first would be released before any Israeli hostages.
The Israeli government this week published a list of 300 names — all people 18 years old and younger or women — of Palestinian prisoners being considered for release. It was not known who the 150 would be freed from.
All the names on the list were described as “security prisoners,” or people who had been arrested in connection with offenses against national security. The prisoners are accused of offenses including supporting terrorism, acts of violence and throwing stones. There are several charges of attempted murder. Most of the people on the list hadn’t been convicted of a crime.
Nir Oz: A Place for Families, Friends and Families in the Disturbance Near the Gaza Strip. The Case of Ms. Katzenellenbogen
Ms. Katzenellenbogen, his cousin, who lives in Tel Aviv, said on Friday night that she remained concerned for Mr. Katzir and the other captives still in Gaza, and noted that Israeli soldiers were on the ground there.
Driving through the lush fields that month with this reporter, he would only stop the car behind clumps of trees or bushes as cover in case of sniper fire.
Ms. Katzir is a very different person now that she has returned to a very different life. Her husband, Rami Katzir, was killed in the attack on Nir Oz. Her son, Elad, 47, was also kidnapped and remains in Gaza. And like all the residents of the ravaged communities along the border, Ms. Katzir will have no home to go back to for the foreseeable future.
In the seven years that followed the establishment of the state of Israel, the wheat and potato fields of Nir Oz stretched up to the security fence that Israel built around the Palestinian coastal enclave. The apartment buildings, water towers and minarets are located in the Palestinian village of Abasan.
Larry Butler, a survivor of the attack, said that there are kids without parents, parents without kids, and grandparents with grandchild but no parents.
The Gaza Assassination of Ms. Katzenellenbogen on Oct. 7: A Sad Moment for the Many Israelis
It was a sad moment for a lot of people. In the Hamas-led assault of Oct. 7 in southern Israel, armed assailants surged across the border from Gaza and killed about 1,200 people, the majority of them civilians, according to Israeli officials — making it the deadliest day in Israel’s 75-year-history. The assailants also took about 240 more as captives into the Palestinian coastal enclave.
There was a sense of loss at a hotel in Eilat where a lot of the residents of Nir Oz are currently staying.
Twelve of the 13 Israeli hostages freed on Friday had been seized from Nir Oz. The 13th was one of five taken from Nirim, another kibbutz along the Gaza border.
Echoing the mixed feelings of many, Ms. Katzenellenbogen said soon after her aunt’s release that she felt “happiness for Hanna’s return from captivity but also concern about her physical and mental health.”
Even Ms. Katzir’s relatives were surprised to hear that she was alive when the Israeli authorities informed them late Thursday that she was on the list to be freed on Friday, according to a niece, Dalit Katzenellenbogen.
The Islamic Jihad group said it would provide evidence to prove that Ms. Katzir died, but never did.
The nation was impressed by the help given to a 76 year old woman who used to use a walker from an ambulance.
Many Israelis stayed glued to television screens all afternoon and evening, catching first glimpses of those being released through the windows of the Red Cross ambulances transporting them across the border from Gaza into Egypt, then watching their first steps as they emerged from captivity into freedom. The Israeli authorities only confirmed their identities once they had been liberated.
Mr. Asher said he was not celebrating and that the hostages families were his new family.
“It is permitted to feel joy and also to shed a tear. Yoni Asher said in a video recording that he was with his wife, Doron Asher and their two daughters, Aviv andraz, and that that was human. Ms. Katz Asher and the girls were kidnapped while visiting Ms. Katz Asher’s mother in Nir Oz, a pastoral kibbutz, or communal village, near the Gaza border.
Keren Munder and her son, Ohad Munder Zichri, residents of Kfar Saba in central Israel, were visiting her parents, Ruth and Abraham Munder, in Kibbutz Nir Oz, near the Gaza border, when the Oct. 7 assault took place.
Ruth and Abraham’s son, Roee, 50, was killed during the attack. Ohad had his ninth birthday in captivity on Oct. 23. Abraham, 78, is believed to still be held in Gaza.
Ms. Moshe was last seen on October 7, when she was a passenger on a motorcycle being driven into Gaza. After her husband was killed during the Hamas assault, she was kidnapped from her safe room.
Naama Ben-Dvora told an Israeli station that she felt a sense of great relief and hope, and that every one of them would come home.
Ms. Adar helped found Kibbutz Nir Oz in the 1950s, according to her family. She was kidnapped with her grandson.
The photograph of Ms. Adar being taken became a defining image of the attack. She was photographed wrapped in a pink blanket as she sat in a golf cart that was driven by militants into Gaza.
Ms. Peri, one of five people who were captured on Oct. 7 from Kibbutz Nirim, immigrated to Israel from South Africa in the 1960s and has lived at Nirim ever since. Ms. Peri worked at the community’s grocery store. One of her three children was killed in the assault on Oct. 7 and another was kidnapped to Gaza and is believed to still be a captive there.
The Hostages Family Forum is a nongovernmental organization advocating for release of the hostages and supporting their families according to Ms.Peri, who has diabetes and one eye.
Ms.Moses is a cancer survivor and a nature lover who also has diabetes and other health problems according to the Hostages Family Forum.
She loves to hike despite her health issues, the forum said. A dual German and Norwegian citizen, she traveled toNorway in the summer and was going to go to Mozambique in the winter.
A mother and her two daughters were kidnapped while they were at her mom’s house in Kabikt Nir Oz. The Katz Ashers hold dual German citizenship.
Ms. Katz Asher’s husband, Yoni Asher, 37, last heard from her on Oct. 7, when she called him to say that there were terrorists inside her mother’s home.
Later, he spotted all four of his relatives in a video posted on social media, which showed them being driven through Gaza on the back of a pickup truck. Mr. Asher saw that his wife’s phone was taken to a city in southern Gaza.