Four mothers of hostages held by Palestinian terrorists in Gaza met with International Committee of the Red Cross President Mirjana Spoljaric at the organization’s headquarters in Geneva on Tuesday.
During the meeting, each of the four mothers passed Spoljaric a letter in the hope that Hamas will permit Red Cross representatives to pass them over to the hostages.
“We as mothers wanted to express our feelings about our worries for our sons and how it’s urgent to do everything to make contact with them… and give them the letter so they will have hope,” said Viki Cohen, mother of captive soldier Nimrod Cohen, to AFP.
Also in attendance were Sylvia Cunio, mother of hostages David and Ariel Cunio; Galia David, mother of hostage Evyatar David; and Meirav Gilboa-Dala, mother of hostage Guy Gilboa-Dalal.
“We came out of there with a feeling that we touched her heart,” said Meirav Gilboa-Dalal in a statement released via the Forum. “We left with the feeling that something might happen.”
Physician Hagai Levine, head of the Forum’s health team, later held separate meetings with Spoljaric and with World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Forum said.
“We agreed on the desperate need to release all hostages immediately and to demand a permanent ceasefire,” wrote Ghebreyesus of the meeting on X. “This nightmare must come to an end.”
Levine gave both Spoljaric and Ghebreyesus a report on the deliberate starvation of hostages written by the Forum’s health experts, as well as the book “Hunger Disease,” in which Jewish doctors held in the Warsaw Ghetto during the Holocaust wrote about the effects of starvation there.
In addition, the Forum said, Spoljaric was given also given a Health Ministry report released Tuesday on the abuse suffered by 12 hostages who were released earlier this year, as well as a compilation of medical reports stressing the hostages’ need for urgent medical intervention and visits by the Red Cross.
The ICRC has reiterated its call to be granted access to the hostages, saying it stands prepared and ready to bring them medicine, food and family news.
While the Red Cross is in constant dialogue with all parties, it is not involved in any negotiations.
The Red Cross renewed its demand to visit the hostages after Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad released footage of hostages Evyatar David and Rom Braslavski, respectively, showing them both to be emaciated.
Galia David said she did not want to watch the video of her son, who could be seen in an underground tunnel digging a hole he said he feared was his grave.
“I didn’t want to watch this video because I was afraid that it would tear me apart. I know I must be his voice. I know I must keep on until he will return back,” she told a meeting with the UN correspondents’ association. “We are concerned all the time our sons are in the dungeons of Gaza.”
“We are really afraid” that the war will continue, she added. “We know from hostages that were released that the Hamas terrorists are even more evil with them when there is fighting. They abuse them more, so it affects them for sure, it affects our sons.”
Cohen told AFP: “Fighting is not a solution. The only solution to bring Nimrod and the other hostages home is to end the war and sign a deal.”
“We need that the world will pressure Hamas and our government,” she said. “We need pressure on both sides.”
Nimrod Cohen, Guy Gilboa-Dalal, Evyatar David and Ariel and David Cunio are among the 20 hostages still thought to be alive, all of them young men abducted during the Hamas onslaught of October 7, 2023, which sparked the war in Gaza.
Terror groups in Gaza are also holding the bodies of at least 28 captives 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.