The Israeli authorities are making preparations to welcome residence dozens of hostages held incommunicado by Hamas for over a 12 months in Gaza, with out figuring out whether or not they are going to return starved, traumatized or lifeless.
Thirty-three hostages are presupposed to be freed within the first part of the Gaza cease-fire settlement between Israel and Hamas, within the first such main launch since a weeklong cease-fire seven weeks into the struggle. Some households have caught glimpses of their family members in Hamas-directed hostage movies. However it’s removed from clear in what situation the captives will return.
At Israeli hospitals, well being officers have been getting ready remoted areas the place the hostages can start recuperating in privateness. Israel’s Well being Ministry has drafted an intensive protocol for his or her psychological and bodily therapy. There are explicit considerations that they could be severely malnourished.
“Those who had been freed again then had been already poorly nourished,” Hagar Mizrahi, a senior Israeli well being ministry official, mentioned of the hostages freed throughout the 2023 truce. “Think about their scenario now, after a further 400 days. We’re extraordinarily fearful about this.”
After Hamas led the Oct. 7, 2023, assault on Israel, killing about 1,200 individuals and capturing about 250 others, about 105 Israeli and international hostages had been freed within the weeklong truce in November that 12 months. Just a few had been later launched in Israeli army operations, and Israeli troopers recovered the our bodies of dozens of others.
However round 98 hostages remained in Gaza, dozens of whom presumed lifeless by the Israeli authorities.
Of the ladies, older males and different hostages returning beneath the primary part of this cease-fire deal, many are believed to have been held within the militant group’s warren of tunnels in Gaza, situations prone to go away bodily and psychological scars.
Well being officers have been poring over each piece of intelligence — together with the hostage movies — in an effort to discern the hostages’ situation, Dr. Mizrahi mentioned. A committee of officers that features Dr. Mizrahi has decided that some had been killed.
Israeli officers say the logistics of the discharge shall be broadly just like these throughout the earlier cease-fire, when 105 hostages had been launched in trade for 240 Palestinians jailed in Israel.
In that trade, Hamas fighters handed over hostages — principally girls and youngsters — to the Worldwide Committee of the Purple Cross. The Purple Cross’s employees ferried the captives from Gaza in a marked ambulance to Egypt earlier than taking them to Israel.
On the border crossing, Israeli intelligence brokers verified their identities. Across the identical time, Israeli safety officers launched a specified group of Palestinian girls and teenage prisoners.
This time, the Israeli authorities have established three reception factors to obtain the hostages alongside the Gaza border, based on an Israeli army official. These shall be staffed by Israeli troopers, in addition to medical doctors and psychologists, mentioned the official, who spoke on situation of anonymity in accordance with protocol.
From there, the hostages shall be taken to the Israeli hospitals which have been getting ready to look after them, the official mentioned.
The 105 hostages launched in November 2023 got here residence after roughly 50 days in captivity in Gaza. They arrived in a rustic that had essentially modified; some discovered solely then about associates and family members who had been killed within the Hamas-led assault.
At first, officers aimed to reintegrate returning hostages as shortly as potential, based on Dr. Mizrahi. Now, the well being authorities suggest that the hostages being launched stay within the hospital for no less than 4 days, if not longer, she mentioned.
Within the meantime, the hostages’ members of the family — a few of whom themselves survived captivity — can solely wait.
“Final time, we noticed the Purple Cross transferring the hostages, and a few of them had been operating to the kin, hugging them,” mentioned Einat Yehene, a scientific psychologist working with the Hostage Households Discussion board, an advocacy group. “It’s not going to be straightforward and related this time, given the bodily and the emotional situations we anticipate.”
