Tel Aviv — Like the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas detained in its sixth day, the US-Israeli designated terrorist group on Friday released the names of the next four Israeli hostages it says it will release on Saturday, in exchange for 200 additional Palestinian detainees currently held in Israeli prisons . The hostages named by Hamas are all female Israeli soldiers, according to a statement made by a Hamas official earlier in the week.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office confirmed in a brief statement that it had received the list of Hamas hostages on Friday, but did not immediately confirm the identities of the female soldiers expected to return home on Saturday.
Currently, seven Israeli women are still detained in Gaza, including five IDF soldiers and two civilians. One of the civilians is Arbel Yehoud, who was kidnapped during the October 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Kibbutz Nir Oz and whose last chilling message to her partner Ariel Cunio, who escaped, was: “We We’re in a horror movie.
The other is Shiri Bibas, who was taken with her two young children Ariel and Kfir. Hamas claimed that Shiri, Ariel and Kfir were later killed in an Israeli bombardment. In a television interview in June, Benny Gantz, then an Israeli minister, indicated that the government knew what happened to the Bibas family, but said he could not provide details.
A Hamas official said that under the ceasefire Under the agreement, for every female Israeli soldier released, Israel would release 30 female prisoners serving life sentences and an additional 20 female prisoners serving long sentences.
Netanyahu’s office said it would release later Friday a list of Palestinians he intends to release in the next exchange. Most of them are expected to be women, as are the approximately 90 prisoners released in the first exchange on January 19, hours after the ceasefire agreement took effect.
Hamas’ publication of first three hostages a week ago – three Israeli women, including one with dual British nationality – appeared in images broadcast around the world. Red Cross vehicles were first seen heading toward Gaza City before sunset, a sign that the deal was on track. In one of the largest squares in Gaza City, the door of a Hamas vehicle opened and Romi Gonen, 24, Emily Damari, 28, and Doron Steinbrecher, 31, rushed into a Red Cross car waited as heavily armed and masked Hamas militants climbed onto the cars and thousands of spectators watched.
If the next four Israelis are released as planned on Saturday, 89 hostages — living and dead — would remain in Gaza, according to Israeli officials, including seven dual U.S. nationals: Keith Siegel, 65, of Chapel Hill, North Carolina; Sagui Dekel-Chen, 35, who grew up in Bloomfield, Connecticut; and Edan Alexander, 19, of Tenafly, New Jersey.
Four other Americans were reported killed during the 15-month war.
Ceasefire in Gaza tested, but held
In Gaza, the ceasefire was experienced by isolated violence this week, but held on.
Israeli tank shelling killed two Palestinians on Thursday in the first bloodbath since airstrikes stopped Sunday morning. The Israeli military said its forces in southern Gaza opened fire on masked and armed suspects moving toward troops and posing a threat. The Israeli military said the incident occurred east of the town of Rafah in southern Gaza and in the area of the Kerem Shalom border crossing with Israel, through which some humanitarian trucks now deliver food, water and medical supplies.
The UN says more than 650 trucks carrying food and other humanitarian supplies arrived in Gaza on Thursday, slightly more than the 600 per day agreed to in the ceasefire deal.
Tens, if not hundreds of thousands of displaced Gazans are eagerly awaiting next weekend, preparing to freely return to the enclave’s decimated north, as was also agreed in the deal. A grim indication of what awaits them has already been discovered by those who have returned to their homes, or what remains of them, in the south.
The returnees found entire neighborhoods reduced to ruins, and even without the heavy machinery actually needed, they began the work of rebuilding and the grim task of finding and unearthing the remains of their loved ones. Nearly 200 bodies have been found since Sunday, but the Hamas-run enclave’s civil defense estimates that more than 10,000 bodies are likely still under the rubble, and admits that some may never be found.
In Rafah, Mohammed Mustafa Hamad Qeshta told the CBS News team in Gaza on Wednesday that an IDF strike had killed his brother Ibrahim 261 days earlier.
“Today we took him out with the broom,” he shouted. “The whole house collapsed and fell on him. We called civil defense to ask for help to recover his body. They kept saying they would, but it’s taking time and we want We decided to dig it out ourselves and I called my friends and we agreed to come here after morning prayer and work together. having dug a lot and carried many stones, we found his sweater green and called family to tell them we found it.
Ibrahim’s mother, Sameera Masoud Al-Shaer, told CBS News she was happy to at least have closure.
“I’m happy and these are tears of joy,” she said. “I’m glad I found him. It’s the best moment. I was waiting for the ceasefire so I could see him. It’s the best moment of my life. Thank God the wall fell on him and we were able to find the whole body and it was not eaten by the dogs.
As the ceasefire in Gaza holds, the IDF this week shifted its attention and firepower to what it says are Iranian-backed militants in the West Bank, the much larger Palestinian territory than Israel has been occupying for a long time.
The Israeli army launch of operation “Iron Wall” Tuesday, a day after President Trump reversed a Biden-era executive order that imposed sanctions on some Israeli settlers in the West Bank considered a threat to peace and security.
At least a dozen Palestinians have been killed and dozens more injured since the IDF offensive began, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry in the West Bank.
The United Nations on Friday denounced what it called Israel’s use of “warfare” methods in operations in the West Bank.
