Families of Hostages need Proof of Life in Gaza
Families of Hostages in Gaza Are Desperate for Proof of Life: The Case of a Girl with a Terrorist
Warring nations have blocked the Red Cross from visiting hostages or prisoners of war in previous conflicts. The Red Cross had little access to prisoners held by either side in the war between Ukraine and Russia. The group wrote that it did not help prisoners of war or their families to be blamed for being denied full and immediate access.
The Red Cross said that they are pushing for teams to be allowed to check on the hostages, but that the I.C.R.C doesn’t take part in negotiations leading to the release of hostages. As a neutral humanitarian intermediary, we remain ready to facilitate any future release that the parties to the conflict agree to.”
Separate discussions about a possible release of some hostages are being conducted through intermediaries, with Israel and the United States communicating with Hamas only by way of messages passed back and forth by negotiators in Egypt and Qatar.
In late October, Israeli forces rescued one hostage, and four others were released by Hamas about a week earlier. But there have been no further breakthroughs.
But the fact that there is no definitive playbook in the case of hostages during wartime, no exact timing for reporting about whether they are dead or alive leaves the family members with little to hold on to as the days slowly pass.
“Abigail was in her father’s arms,” Ms. Naftali said on “NBC Nightly News” with Lester Holt. A terrorist killed him while they were running and then he fell on the girl.
She noted that it was learned that the girl had crawled out from under her father’s body, and was taken in by a neighbor.
Rachel Goldberg, Mrs. Polin’s wife and other family members say they have no idea when or if they will discover anything definitive about their loved ones. Ms. Goldberg detailed the grief of a mother who has no idea if her son is alive “or if you died yesterday, or if you died five minutes ago.”
Yagil and Yarden were killed in a Gazan border kibbutz in the Oct. 7 attack by Israel and Hamas
Activists have mounted an aggressive campaign in Israel to demand swifter action from the Red Cross, where the faces of the hostages are plastered everywhere on posters.
As Israel and Hamas indicated that they were preparing a cease-fire to free 50 hostages, the families of those taken to Gaza were grappling with conflicting emotions: a growing optimism that their loved ones would return that was chilled by fear that the deal might collapse.
Yarden Roman was kidnapped from Be’eri, a Gaza border kibbutz, during the Hamas-led attack on October 7. The fear is that we’ll fall if we go higher. There is a lot of anxiety.
Less than an hour later, Hamas announced in a statement on Telegram that it had agreed to a four-day cease-fire that would allow for 50 hostages to be exchanged for 150 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
Yifat Zailer — whose cousin Shiri Bibas was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz along with Ms. Bibas’s husband, Yarden Bibas, and their two red-haired children, Ariel and Kfir — said her anxious wait for news has been tinged by the hope that she might soon see her loved ones and the fear something might go awry.
“I’m trying to take care not to be happy too quickly,” Ms. Zailer said on Tuesday. It could collapse tomorrow, for any reason. We might see the days pass, the hostages returning — and Shiri and her children not among them.”
Kfir, less than a year old, is one of the youngest Israelis abducted by Hamas-led gunmen on Oct. 7. The family of his brother in Israel still doesn’t know the location of him or his brother, even if they are alive.
Yarden, Ms. Bibas’ husband, is likely to stay behind even if she returns home as part of the hostage deal.
Yagil appeared in a video released on Nov. 9 by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an armed group based in Gaza that invaded Israeli towns on Oct. 7 alongside Hamas. In the video, he asked Israel to bring him home. Hostages are likely to be made to perform in such videos and their statements may have been coerced.
On the hostage exchange of a Thai foreign worker kidnapped by Hamas terrorists in October 2007, when she was still recovering from surgery
Ms. Phillips-Bahat and her family have not heard whether her cousins would be among those coming home in a hostage exchange, but they remain optimistic.
In October of 2007, armed Hamas terrorists invaded her home, but she was still recovering from breast reconstruction surgery. She was weak and easily fatigued, and a buildup of painful scar tissue on her chest caused tightness, limiting her mobility.
Ms. Engelbert and her family, including her husband, Ronen, and their daughters, Mika and Yuval, were kidnapped by the terrorists while they were inside their home on the Nir Oz kibbutz.
“The last I heard from my sister was on that black sabbath at 9:30 in the morning, and she spoke very quietly, and she said, ‘They’re inside the house,’” Ms. Engelbert’s brother Diego Engelbert said in an interview.
“We don’t know if she’s getting any medical treatment, if anyone is taking care of her, if she is getting any pain relief or any of the medication she needs to keep the cancer from coming back,” Mr. Engelbert said.
A Thai foreign worker who was nine months pregnant in October may have given birth to a baby in captivity. There are many kibbutz members in their mid-80s who were taking medications for chronic conditions like high blood pressure, and younger adults who have both psychiatric conditions and medical conditions that can be fatal if left untreated.
And then there were those who sustained potentially life-threatening injuries in the raid itself, which killed an estimated 1,200 people, most of them civilians.
