The Israeli authorities are making preparations to welcome dwelling dozens of hostages held incommunicado by Hamas for over a 12 months in Gaza, with out understanding whether or not they are going to return starved, traumatized or useless.
Thirty-three hostages are purported to be freed within the first part of the Gaza cease-fire settlement between Israel and Hamas, within the first such main launch since a weeklong cease-fire seven weeks into the conflict. Some households have caught glimpses of their family members in Hamas-directed hostage movies. However it’s removed from clear in what situation the captives will return.
At Israeli hospitals, well being officers have been making ready remoted areas the place the hostages can start recuperating in privateness. Israel’s Well being Ministry has drafted an intensive protocol for his or her psychological and bodily remedy. There are explicit considerations that they might be severely malnourished.
“Those who have been freed again then have been already poorly nourished,” Hagar Mizrahi, a senior Israeli well being ministry official, mentioned of the hostages freed throughout the 2023 truce. “Think about their scenario now, after an extra 400 days. We’re extraordinarily nervous about this.”
After Hamas led the Oct. 7, 2023, assault on Israel, killing about 1,200 folks and capturing about 250 others, about 105 Israeli and international hostages have been freed within the weeklong truce in November that 12 months. A number of have been later launched in Israeli navy operations, and Israeli troopers recovered the our bodies of dozens of others.
However round 98 hostages remained in Gaza, dozens of whom are presumed useless by the Israeli authorities.
Of the ladies, older males and different hostages returning below the primary part of this cease-fire deal, many are believed to have been held within the militant group’s warren of tunnels in Gaza, situations prone to depart bodily and psychological scars.
Well being officers have been poring over every bit of intelligence — together with the hostage movies — in an effort to discern the hostages’ situation, Dr. Mizrahi mentioned. A committee of officers that features Dr. Mizrahi has decided that some have been killed.
Israeli officers say the logistics of the discharge shall be broadly much like these throughout the earlier cease-fire, when 105 hostages have been launched in change for 240 Palestinians jailed in Israel.
In that change, Hamas fighters handed over hostages — largely girls and kids — to the Worldwide Committee of the Crimson Cross. The Crimson Cross’s staff ferried the captives from Gaza in a marked ambulance to Egypt earlier than taking them to Israel.
On the border crossing, Israeli intelligence brokers verified their identities. Across the identical time, Israeli safety officers launched a specified group of Palestinian girls and teenage prisoners.
This time, the Israeli authorities have established three reception factors to obtain the hostages alongside the Gaza border, in line with an Israeli navy official. These shall be staffed by Israeli troopers, in addition to medical doctors and psychologists, mentioned the official, who spoke on situation of anonymity in accordance with protocol.
From there, the hostages shall be taken to the Israeli hospitals which have been making ready to look after them, the official mentioned.
The 105 hostages launched in November 2023 got here dwelling after roughly 50 days in captivity in Gaza. They arrived in a rustic that had basically modified; some realized solely then about buddies and family members who had been killed within the Hamas-led assault.
At first, officers aimed to reintegrate returning hostages as rapidly as doable, in line with Dr. Mizrahi. Now, the well being authorities suggest that the hostages being launched stay within the hospital for at the least 4 days, if not longer, she mentioned.
Within the meantime, the hostages’ members of the family — a few of whom themselves survived captivity — can solely wait.
“Final time, we noticed the Crimson Cross transferring the hostages, and a few of them have been operating to the kin, hugging them,” mentioned Einat Yehene, a medical psychologist working with the Hostage Households Discussion board, an advocacy group. “It’s not going to be straightforward and related this time, given the bodily and the emotional situations we anticipate.”
