Published: 1 December 2023
Last updated: 6 September 2024
The ceasefire has been extended for another day but what will happen if there is an “all for all” offer – to free remaining hostages in exchange for every jailed terrorist and ending the war?
Over the past week, the world has watched as a trickle of hostages has emerged from Gaza: children, mothers, old women, Thai workers from the other side of the world.
The first testimonies exposed a little of their experiences. Plastic chairs as beds. Irregular meals of bread and rice. Hours spent waiting for the bathroom.
The future of other hostages remains uncertain. The Bibas family – a 10-month-old baby, a four-year-old and their two parents – have become a symbol of the problem of managing hostage releases.
The Israeli army notified the Bibas family on Wednesday that it is investigating a claim by Hamas that three of its members held hostage in Gaza were killed while in captivity.
Hamas claims Shiri Bibas, 32, and her two sons, Ariel, 4, and Kfir, 10 months, were killed in a Gaza bombing. There were no reports on the condition of Yarden Bibas, 34, who was also kidnapped with his wife and kids from kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7. It appears that Hamas abducted the Bibas family but handed them to another terrorist group.
So far, the ceasefire has held and hostages are continuing to be released, but once women and children have been released there are questions over the continuing viability of the deal that swaps hostages for Palestinian prisoners and a ceasefire in Gaza.
Times of Israel Editor David Horovitz predicts next will come the terrorists’ offer to free all the rest of those they seized on October 7, which will be mainly soldiers and former soldiers — in return for all of the Palestinian security prisoners held by Israel: “All of the murderers, all of the instigators and orchestrators and perpetrators of terrorism, including all of those who were captured in Israel on and soon after October 7.
“The offer will likely have been negotiated or brokered by Qatar — the currently much-hailed nimble truce-maker … whose funding has helped keep Hamas in power. And it will be presented, and lapped up around much of the world that is unable or unwilling to distinguish between those who seek to protect life and those hell-bent on ending it, as eminently reasonable: Your armed men and women for ours. And that won’t be the full extent of the offer. The return of the rest of Israel’s hostages will also require an end to the war.
