Israel has delayed an expected release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and detainees in exchange for returned Israeli hostages “until further notice,” the Palestinian Prisoners Society said early Sunday, reports CNN.
According to the report, “Israel’s Prime Minister’s Office confirmed the postponement, demanding guarantees that future hostage releases will take place without ‘humiliating ceremonies’.”
Hamas released six Israeli hostages from Gaza on Saturday in two public ceremonies and one private transfer, the final return of live hostages in this first phase of a ceasefire deal that began last month. The next release, of the remains of four more hostages, is expected Thursday.
In return for Saturday’s release, Israel was expected to free 620 Palestinian prisoners and detainees, including 23 children and one woman. But Israeli officials delayed that release, citing further security reviews.
Hamas’ media office had earlier accused Israel of violating the truce with the delay, casting some uncertainty over the precarious ceasefire deal.
The delay, announced in the early hours of Sunday local time, is a response to Hamas’s “repeated violations” of the deal, according to the Prime Minister’s Office, including using hostages in videos and public displays that “demean their dignity.”
Hamas had released a heavily edited propaganda video showing two unreleased Israeli captives watching Saturday’s hostage release ceremony from a vehicle. The hostages seen in the video – identified by the Hostages and Missing Families’ Forum as Evyatar David and Guy Gilboa Dalal – plead for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to secure their freedom. The men were likely speaking under duress.
The two men’s families authorized media use of “the sickening Hamas video,” according to the forum.
Hamas and its allies continue to hold 63 Israeli hostages in Gaza. At least 32 of those are believed to be dead, according to the Israeli government – one of whom, the soldier Hadar Goldin, has been held since 2014.
The first two hostages to be released on Saturday – Tal Shoham, 40, and Avera Mengistu, 38 – were turned over to Red Cross officials in the southern Gaza city of Rafah. Shoham was kidnapped from kibbutz Be’eri during the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023, along with his two children, wife, and mother-in-law, all of whom were released the following month. Mengistu, an Israeli from Ashkelon, crossed into Gaza in 2014.
Later, thousands of people including Hamas fighters gathered at a separate location in Nuseirat, central Gaza, where three of the hostages – Eliya Cohen, 27, Omer Shem Tov, 22, and Omer Wenkert, 23 – were handed over in another heavily choreographed ceremony. A number of children appeared on the stage wearing shirts bearing photographs of Hamas leaders who had been killed.
The three men were kidnapped at the Nova music festival near the border with Gaza during the October 7 attack. They appeared thin but in better condition than some previously freed hostages, whose appearance sparked alarm in Israel. Shem Tov seemed to engage with some of the Hamas fighters on stage and blew a kiss toward the crowd.
A sixth hostage, 37-year-old Hisham al-Sayed, an Arab-Israeli from a Bedouin community in southern Israel who walked into Gaza in 2015, was turned over to the Red Cross in Gaza City, according to an Israeli security source and a Hamas source.
Al-Sayed and Mengistu both reportedly have serious mental health conditions. They were captured by Hamas about a decade ago.
The Israeli military said the hostages had crossed into Israel and would receive medical assessments before being reunited with their families.
Crowds gathered in Tel Aviv’s “Hostage Square” to witness the releases on screen, some waving to the sky as a helicopter carrying Mengistu passed overhead.
Just before being handed over to the Red Cross in Rafah early on Saturday morning, Shoham and Mengistu were paraded on stage, flanked by armed and masked militants. They were handed documents, and Shoham was forced to address the crowd.
In contrast, al-Sayed received a quieter handover, which one leading Bedouin figure in Israel said showed Hamas’ respect of “the Palestinians in the occupied territories.”
Many from this often marginalized community – one of several ethnic minority groups in Israel – identify distinctly as Bedouin Israelis, while others see themselves as Palestinian citizens of Israel.
Hundreds of Palestinians waiting to be released
Throughout the day, crowds of Palestinians waited under heavy rain in front of Gaza’s European Hospital in Khan Younis, anticipating the eventual arrival of their loved ones. As the hours passed, some trickled out of the hospital while others slept in the hospital corridors in hopes of waiting out the delay.
According to the Palestinian Prisoners Society, 620 prisoners were expected to be released from Israeli detention on Saturday – a slightly higher figure than previously reported and the largest number of Palestinian prisoners to be exchanged since the ceasefire deal began.
Just under 500 of those are expected to be sent back to Gaza, including 445 who were detained in the enclave since the war began in October 2023 and have been held without charge, as well as 23 children and one woman, according to the group.
In addition, 151 prisoners serving life sentences and long sentences were due to be released to the occupied West Bank, Jerusalem and some sent into exile.
According to prison authorities, a senior Israeli prisons official, Lt. Col. Kobi Yaakovi, ordered the Palestinian prisoners to wear clothes that included the inscription: “I have pursued mine enemies and overtaken them; neither did I turn back till they were consumed.”
‘Joyful moment’ accompanied by ‘deep pain’
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said that Saturday’s hostage release was a “moving and joyful moment” but was accompanied by “deep pain over the fate of Shiri Bibas and her sons.”
The remains of Bibas – the Israeli mother whose young family became a symbol for the plight of hostages being held in Gaza – had been expected to be among those of four hostages returned by Hamas on Thursday, alongside her sons Kfir and Ariel, and another captive, Oded Lifshitz.
However, while forensic tests confirmed that the remains included those of the two boys and Lifshitz, the fourth body was not that of Shiri Bibas – and nor did it match that of any other Israeli hostage, prompting demands for the correct remains to be returned.
On Friday evening, Bibas’ remains arrived in Tel Aviv following condemnation in Israel.
“Last night, our Shiri was brought home. After the identification process at the Institute for Forensic Medicine, we received the news this morning that we had feared: our Shiri was murdered in captivity,” said a statement from her family provided by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum on Saturday.
Hamas, which says Shiri and the two boys were killed in an Israeli airstrike in 2023, said that her body may have earlier been mixed up with the body of another person killed in the airstrike, and vowed to investigate.
Israel and Hamas are holding indirect negotiations to extend the ceasefire. Those talks began more than two weeks late.
Bd-Pratidin English/ AM
