The Hostages Families Forum led a convoy of vehicles from Hostage Square in Tel Aviv to the Gaza border on Wednesday in a call for a hostage deal that would see their relatives released from Hamas captivity. They plan to call out to their loved ones early Thursday morning using loudspeakers mounted on a crane.
“The opportunity to bring everyone back is slipping away with each passing day,” the Forum said in a statement announcing the convoy.
The convoy was scheduled to arrive at the Kibbutz Be’eri amphitheater at 5:30 p.m. and included trailers carrying some of the cars that were burnt and badly damaged during Hamas’s October 7 massacre. Terrorists murdered some 1,200 people that day, and took 251 hostages.
“What will be recorded in the history books of this cursed war is not whether we conquered the Philadelphi Corridor [in Gaza] or how many terrorists we killed, but whether we cared for and brought our hostages home,” said Shira Albag, mother of abducted soldier Liri Albag, before the convoy set off.
“Until now, our military operations have rescued eight hostages alive. In the first deal, 105 hostages were released. The latest rescue is a reminder of what can be done when we act with determination,” said hostage Eliya Cohen’s fiancee, Ziv Abud.
Abud and the other families plan to call out to their relatives using loudspeakers in the hopes that they will be able to hear them.
“My Eliya, the last time I saw you, 327 days ago, it was in a shelter from which most didn’t come out alive. Since then, you’ve been somewhere deep in Hamas tunnels. Today, I’m traveling to be as close to you as possible. I hope you can hear me. I hope you’ll return soon,” she said.
“The prime minister has a majority in the government to pass a deal, he has a majority in the Knesset, and he also has political security for a deal. The only thing standing in the way of a deal right now is the prime minister’s courage,” said Hagit Cohen. Her son Itay’s body is being held in Gaza.
It is believed that 104 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of 34 confirmed dead by the IDF.
Hamas released 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November, and four hostages were released before that. Eight hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 30 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the military as they tried to escape their captors.
Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of two IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.
Ongoing attempts to negotiate a hostage-for-ceasefire deal have repeatedly failed to produce results as each side refuses to cave on its core demands and accuses the other of sabotaging talks.
Early last month, however, Hamas submitted a hostage deal proposal that for the first time saw it cave on its main demand that Israel commit upfront to a permanent ceasefire. In exchange, it made a series of amendments to the previous Israeli proposal.
Netanyahu rejected many of the changes and went on to issue his own new demands, including that the IDF maintain its presence in the Philadelphi Corridor along the Egypt-Gaza border in order to prevent weapons smuggling. He also has insisted that a mechanism be established to prevent armed Gazans from returning to northern Gaza across the Netzarim Corridor carved out by the IDF across the Strip. Both demands have become sticking points that the American, Qatari and Egyptian mediators have worked to overcome.
Despite ongoing talks, Netanyahu insisted there was no deal on the table last week in a meeting with ex-hostages and relatives of hostages who remain in captivity.