Hamas handed over Israeli hostages Tal Shoham and Avera Mengisto to International Red Cross representatives in Gaza’s Rafah on Saturday, live television footage showed, after Israel confirmed that a body handed over hours earlier was that of hostage Shiri Bibas.
Armed and masked Hamas militants gathered at two locations in Gaza, in Rafah and Nuseirat, to be hand over hostages to the Red Cross, which will transport them to Israeli forces.
Shoham and Mengisto are two of the six hostages due to be released on Saturday, the last living hostages from a group of 33 due to be freed in the first stage of the ceasefire deal that took effect on January 19th.
Four of the six hostages, Eliya Cohen (27) Shoham (40) Omer Shem Tov (22) and Omer Wenkert (23) were seized by Hamas gunmen during their attack on Israel on October 7th, 2023.
Two others, Hisham Al-Sayed (36) and Mengistu (39) have been held by Hamas since they entered Gaza separately under unexplained circumstances about a decade ago.
In return, Israel is expected to release 602 Palestinian prisoners and detainees held in its jails in the latest stage of an exchange that has largely held.
They will include 445 Gazans rounded up by Israeli forces during the war, as well as dozens of convicts serving lengthy or life terms, according to Hamas.
After handing over Shoham and Mengisto, Hamas said on Saturday it was ready to move to the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire deal and to carry out a comprehensive hostage-prisoner exchange to achieve a permanent ceasefire and complete withdrawal of Israeli forces.
The Bibas family has been an emblem of the trauma suffered by Israel on that day. The misidentification of the remains of Shiri Bibas, as well as the staged handover of their coffins by Hamas outraged Israelis. Her husband Yarden, seized and helped separately from his family, was freed on February 1st.
The Israeli military said intelligence assessments and forensic analysis of the bodies of 10-month-old Kfir Bibas and his four-year-old brother Ariel showed both had been killed deliberately by their captors.
Israel’s army radio, citing the forensic conclusions, said Bibas was likely slain with her children.
“Our Shiri was murdered in captivity and has now returned home to her sons, husband, sister, and all her family for rest,” her family said in a statement.
Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu threatened to make Hamas “pay the full price” for failing to return the body but he refrained from walking away from the ceasefire agreement, which took effect on January 19th.
Hamas, which has itself accused Israel of breaching the ceasefire by blocking vital aid supplies into Gaza, nonetheless formally informed Israel of the names of the hostages to be released on Saturday in a sign the handover would go ahead.
The ceasefire has brought a pause in the fighting, but prospects of a definitive end to the war remain unclear. Hamas, which killed some 1,200 people and took 251 hostages during its attack on Israel, has been at pains to demonstrate that it remains in control in Gaza despite heavy losses in the war.
The Israeli campaign killed at least 48,000 people, according to Palestinian health authorities, and reduced much of the enclave to rubble, leaving some hundreds of thousands in makeshift shelters and dependent on aid trucks.
Both sides have said they intend to start talks on a second stage, which mediators say aim to agree the return of about 60 remaining hostages, less than half of whom are believed to be alive, and the withdrawal of Israeli troops.
But hopes of a deal have been clouded by disagreements over the future of Gaza, that have been deepened by shock across the region over US president Donald Trump’s proposal to clear the enclave of Palestinians and develop it as a Riviera-style resort under US control. – Reuters
