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Tel Aviv — As the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas held into its sixth day, the U.S.- and Israeli-designated terrorist group released the names on Friday of the next four Israeli hostages it says it will release on Saturday, in exchange for 200 more Palestinian detainees currently held in Israeli prisons. The hostages named by Hamas are all female Israeli soldiers, in keeping with a statement given by a Hamas official earlier in the week.
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed in a brief statement that it had received the list of hostages from Hamas on Friday, but it did not immediately confirm the identities of the female soldiers expected to come back home on Saturday.
There are currently seven Israeli women still thought to be held in Gaza, including five IDF service members and two civilians. One of the civilians is Arbel Yehoud, who was abducted in the Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attack on Kibbutz Nir Oz and whose last chilling message to her partner Ariel Cunio, who escaped, was: “We are in a horror movie.”
The other is Shiri Bibas, who was taken with her two young children Ariel and Kfir. Hamas has claimed that Shiri, Ariel and Kfir were later killed in an Israeli bombing. In a TV interview in June, then-Israeli minister Benny Gantz indicated that the government knew what had happened to the Bibas family, but said it could not provide details.
A Hamas official has said that under the terms of the ceasefire agreement, for each Israeli female soldier released, Israel should release 30 prisoners who were given life sentences and 20 additional prisoners who got long sentences.
Netanyahu’s office said it would release a list later Friday of the Palestinians whom it intends to set free in the upcoming swap. Most of them are expected to be women, as were the roughly 90 prisoners freed in the first swap on Jan. 19, hours after the ceasefire deal came into effect
Hamas’ release of the first three hostages a week ago — three Israeli women, including one dual British national — played out in images broadcast around the world. Red Cross vehicles were first seen driving toward Gaza City before sunset, in a sign that the deal was on track. In one of Gaza City’s biggest squares, the door of a Hamas vehicle opened and Romi Gonen, 24, Emily Damari, 28 and Doron Steinbrecher, 31, bolted to a waiting Red Cross car as heavily armed and masked Hamas militants clambered over the cars and thousands of onlookers watched.
If the next four Israelis are released as expected on Saturday, 89 hostages — both living and dead — would remain in Gaza, according to Israeli officials, including seven dual U.S. nationals: Keith Siegel, 65, from Chapel Hill, North Carolina; Sagui Dekel-Chen, 35, who grew up in Bloomfield, Connecticut; and Edan Alexander, 19, from Tenafly, New Jersey.
Four other Americans are believed to have been killed during the 15 months of war.
Gaza ceasefire tested, but holding
In Gaza, the ceasefire has been tested by isolated violence this week, but has held.
Israeli tank shelling killed two Palestinians Thursday in the first bloodshed since airstrikes stopped on Sunday morning. Israel’s military said its forces in the south of Gaza had opened fire on masked, armed suspects moving toward troops and presenting a threat. The IDF said the incident occurred east of the southern Gaza city of Rafah, and in the area of the Kerem Shalom border crossing with Israel, through which some aid trucks are now delivering food, water and medical supplies.
The U.N. says more than 650 trucks carrying food and other humanitarian supplies rolled into Gaza on Thursday, slightly over the 600 per-day agreed in the ceasefire deal.
Tens, if not hundreds of thousands of displaced Gazans have been waiting eagerly for the coming weekend, getting ready to start returning freely to the enclave’s decimated north, as was also agreed in the deal. A grim indication of what awaits them has already been discovered by those who’ve made their way back to homes, or what is left of them, in the south.
Returnees have found entire neighborhoods reduced to rubble, and even without the heavy machinery really needed, they’ve begun the work of rebuilding and the grim task of finding and digging out the remains of loved ones. Almost 200 bodies have been found since Sunday, but the Hamas-run enclave’s civil defense rescue agency estimates that more than 10,000 bodies are likely still under the rubble, and it accepts that some may never be found.
In Rafah, Mohammed Mustafa Hamad Qeshta told CBS News’ team in Gaza on Wednesday that an IDF strike killed his brother Ibrahim 261 days earlier.
“Today, we got him out with the broom,” he cried. “The entire house collapsed and fell on him. We rang the civil defense, asking for help to recover his body. They kept saying they will do it, but it is delayed, and we want to get his body out. We decided to dig it out ourselves and get him out. I called my friends and we agreed to come here after the morning prayer and collaborate. After we dug a lot and carried many stones, we found his sweater. We found his green sweater, and I called the family to tell them we found him.”
Ibrahim’s mother Sameera Masoud Al-Shaer told CBS News she was elated to at least have closure.
“I am happy, and these are the tears of joy,” she said. “I am glad that I found him. This is the best moment. I was waiting for the ceasefire so I could see him. This is the best moment of my life. Thank God the wall fell on him and we could find the entire body and it wasn’t eaten by dogs.”
While the ceasefire in Gaza has held, the IDF has redirected its focus and its firepower this week at what it says are Iran-backed militants in the West Bank, the much larger Palestinian territory that Israel has long occupied.
The IDF launched operation “Iron Wall” on Tuesday, a day after President Trump rescinded a Biden-era executive order that had imposed sanctions on some Israeli settlers in the West Bank who were deemed a threat to peace and security.
At least a dozen Palestinians have been killed and dozens more injured since the IDF offensive began, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry in the West Bank.
On Friday, the United Nations denounced what it called Israel’s use of “war fighting” methods in the West Bank operation.
