The Hamas terror group on Friday released a propaganda video showing hostages Alon Ohel and Guy Gilboa-Dalal, who have spent 700 days in the terror group’s captivity since their abduction on October 7, 2023.

The video was released as a major new Israeli offensive looms in Gaza City — where Gilboa-Dalal says in the clip that he is located.

Defense officials have warned that the takeover operation will put the hostages at greater danger, and the Hostages and Missing Families Forum on Friday urged the government to secure a deal for the captives’ release rather than go forward with the new campaign.

Gilboa-Dalal’s family approved a 28-second clip from the longer video for publication, in which he says the date is August 28, 2025, and that he is being held by Hamas’s Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades in Gaza City.

Gilboa-Dalal is shown with short hair, wearing a dark blue shirt, and displaying expressions of distress, placing his face in his hands. In part of the video, he appears to be sitting in the backseat of a car aboveground.

In remarks likely dictated to him by his captors, he pleads for his release.

“This is all we want, we just want it to end,” he says. “We want to return to our families. Please bring us back.”

The footage released by Hamas on Friday was the first time Ohel has been seen in a video since he, Gilboa-Dalal and 249 others were taken hostage during the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

Ohel’s family did not consent to the publication of any portions of the footage in which he can be seen.

Gilboa-Dalal was last seen in a video in February, during a ceasefire, when Hamas forced him and another captive, Evyatar David, to watch the release of other hostages.

Gilboa-Dalal’s family said in a statement: “Guy, Alon and other hostages were taken to Gaza and we fear greatly for their lives. We must bring them home.”

Opposition Leader Yair Lapid responded to the video, which he says in a post on X was “another painful reminder that Israel must return to negotiations for the return of the hostages and try to close a deal.”

“We must do everything to bring them back home. I’m sending strength to the family, you are not alone, we are with you,” he said.

Yair Golan, chair of the left-wing Democrats party, wrote that the video “illustrates the immediate need to bring everyone back,” adding, “The most just war in Israel’s history has become a war for [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s survival.”

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, by contrast, repeated his demand for Israel to occupy Gaza.

“Hamas’ psychological terror is meant to make us stop the operation in Gaza,” he posted on X. “The warranted response: Full occupation, total crushing, encouragement of massive [Palestinian] migration. Only thus do we win, and only thus do we bring back the hostages in security.”

The video came on Day 700 of the hostages’ captivity, as demonstrations across the country urged the government to close a deal with the Hamas terror group for the release of the hostages, rather than move forward with a looming operation to take over Gaza City in the northern Strip.

The Hostage Families Forum issued a statement on Friday, responding to assessments it said hostage families had heard from the military in recent days, that the planned operation will put their loved ones in significant danger, not least because, according to the forum, the Israel Defense Forces does not know where in Gaza City the hostages are being held.

“We are deeply worried. This operation poses an immediate, direct threat to our loved ones, who have been languishing in Hamas tunnels for 700 days,” the forum said. “We are sorry to say, we have not heard of any way of protecting them.”

The IDF confirmed it had reached out to the hostage families, as it has done several times in the past, ahead of other major operations. The military said it intends to ensure no hostages are harmed during the offensive, but a military source told the Ynet news site, “It’s clear that the operation endangers them.”

“It’s hard to predict how Hamas will behave with the hostages, if they’ll guard them or if they’ll use them as a shield, or, God forbid, kill some of them as manipulation,” a military source told the outlet.

In its statement, the forum lamented that “no plan has been presented to us for how Operation Gideon’s Chariots, Part 2” — the name for the takeover plan, whose “part 1” was an offensive executed earlier this year after the collapse of the last hostage-truce deal — “will not turn into the Murder of the Six, Part 2” — referring to the execution by Hamas of six hostages last summer in Rafah, as Israeli forces approached the tunnel where they were held.

“We are shocked by the decision of the IDF chief of staff to collaborate in an unnecessary war, when he himself reasoned we could arrive at the same goals by means that do not endanger the hostages, living and dead,” the forum added.

IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir has repeatedly warned in private forums that the operation will endanger the hostages, and has reportedly urged the government to accept the phased deal that Hamas said it had agreed to, shortly after Israel declared it would only accept a deal for all the hostages to be released at once.

Other top officials in the military and security establishment are reported to oppose the Gaza City takeover, which the IDF estimates could take months to complete.

Zamir is also said to have warned that the plan will precede another major operation to conquer the refugee camps in central Gaza, and then drag Israel into a full-fledged occupation of the Strip.

Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, handing control to the Palestinian Authority, which was soon toppled by Hamas after an election and violent conflict.

The Hostage Families Forum demanded Friday that “the prime minister, Defense Minister Israel Katz, and the IDF chief of staff meet with us urgently and explain how they will ensure that our loved ones are not hurt by the operation.”

It also demanded “that negotiations begin immediately, on the basis of the Witkoff agreement as a means to a comprehensive agreement that will return all of them.”

Katz, however, said in a statement Friday that “the bolt is now being removed from the gates of Hell in Gaza,” announcing that “the first evacuation order has been sent for a multi-story terror building in Gaza City, in advance of an attack.”

“When the door is opened, it will not be closed, the IDF’s operations will intensify — until the murderers and rapists of Hamas accept Israel’s conditions for an end to the war, starting with the release of all the hostages and [Hamas] giving up its arms — or they will be destroyed,” he said.

Terror groups in the Gaza Strip are holding 48 hostages, including 47 of the 251 abducted by Hamas-led terrorists on October 7, 2023. They include the bodies of at least 26 confirmed dead by the IDF. Twenty are believed to be alive and there are grave concerns for the well-being of two others, Israeli officials have said. Hamas is also holding the body of an IDF soldier killed in Gaza in 2014.

Stav Levaton contributed to this report.