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JERUSALEM — The first Israeli hostage left Hamas captivity in Gaza Friday, on their way to freedom and family in Israel on the first day of a negotiated four-day pause in combat.

The initial group, consisting of females ranging from 4 to 85, were in Israeli custody and expected to be flown quickly to Israeli hospitals where loved ones would greet them in secure facilities. The 13 are the first of 50 Israelis set to be released in exchange for 150 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.

The release was carried out as the first break in Israel’s assault on Gaza began early Friday after seven weeks of war, giving besieged Gazans a chance to emerge, at least for a time, into neighborhoods that have been battered into rubble in many places. Aid workers took the opportunity offered by the pause to rush truckloads of aid into the enclave.

At least 10 Thai workers who were abducted by Hamas on Oct. 7 were also released, according to Thai and Egyptian officials.

The uneasy calm — a 96-hour intermission before the war is expected to resume — began at 7 a.m. local time under the terms of an accord brokered between Israel and Hamas in recent days. The Israeli military will keep its forces in place but cease attacks as captives are swapped in small batches, starting with the 13 Israelis for 39 Palestinians prisoners who departed an Israeli prison soon after the hostage release was confirmed, according to Palestinian officials.

Many in Middle East blame United States for devastation in Gaza

Humanitarian aid trucks immediately mobilized from Egypt as international agencies raced to take advantage of the long-sought pause in fighting. Within minutes of the halt, Gazans filled rubble-strewn streets, many of them impassable, under skies that were clear of fighter jets and drones for the first time in weeks.

Video posted on social media showed children running with what seemed to be pleasure rather than fear. Families carried bundles as some of the estimated 1.7 million displaced — 80 percent of the population — sought provisions and to secure better shelter.

In Gaza City, Ayman Amin ventured for the first time in five days out of the home where he has been taking cover with his wife, three children and a sister. He stepped into a wasteland of ruined buildings where some neighbors were pulling bodies from the rubble.

“We left the house, but our souls are still filled with fear, whether it’s from what we see or the possibility of returning to war after four days,” Amin told The Post. “Today is completely sunny, but fear still lingers in people’s eyes.”

Israel warned Gazans not to treat the pause as a return to normal. Minutes before the scheduled halt in fighting, the military dropped leaflets and sent voice texts telling residents that “the war is not over” and forbidding those who had fled south to try to return to their homes in the north.

Those still living in the northern areas saw evidence that Israel was prepared to back up the threats. In a voice message to The Post, Mahmoud, 36, described a phalanx of Israeli tanks deployed along Nasser Street in northern Gaza City, a clear warning for civilians not to enter large sections of the city. There was heavy-caliber shooting nearby, he said.

“The situation is so dangerous,” he said.

Tanker trucks carrying motor fuel and cooking gas entered Gaza through Egypt soon after hostilities paused, the first of what aid workers hope will be a surge of relief supplies for millions who are hanging on with dwindling food, power, sanitation and health care. Hamas said 200 trucks would deliver aid daily during the pause.

Only limited aid has been allowed to cross into Gaza from Egypt in almost two months of intense bombing. Fuel supplies are depleted, leaving many hospitals, bakeries, water-supply systems and phone networks unable to function without the electricity supplied by generators amid sharply deteriorating humanitarian conditions.

Implementing the agreement, which the Israeli cabinet voted to approve early Wednesday morning, was delayed for 24 hours by last-minute wrangling over logistics, according to Qatari mediators. A final list of the first 13 hostages was delivered to Israel late Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, and the families of those hostages were told to be ready.

Hundreds of family members of hostages braced for days of whipsaw emotions, ready to see some captives walk, or be carried, out of Gaza, but perhaps not their own loved ones. The 50 expected in this deal are all women and children.

“Of course the children have to come back first,” said Adva Adar, whose 85-year-old grandmother Yaffa Adar, 85, was driven into Gaza in her own golf cart. “But we can’t forget the others, and we can’t forget the elders.”

The first group of 13 captives was transferred inside Gaza to representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross, who were to take them through the Rafah crossing into Egypt and transfer them to Israeli custody, according to the Israeli official, who was not authorized to speak publicly.

“Everybody’s celebrating right now,” Dori-Roberts, 46, a live event producer based in Austin, told The Washington Post. “But we know there’s still a lot more hostages.

All of the hostages will emerge from 49 days of captivity into a region that has been transformed by war and devastation since their last contact, on Oct. 7, with the outside. Some may learn for the first time that the Hamas forces that captured them that day also killed their own parents, siblings and friends.

“There are children with parents that have died or were murdered,” Ziv Agmon, an adviser to the head of the National Public Diplomacy Directorate of Israel, said in a briefing to reporters Friday. “And because there was no connection with the hostages, we don’t know what they know and what they don’t.”

The fate of the captives has consumed the Israeli public, and growing demonstrations demanding their release helped to push the government into negotiations with Hamas. Their return has been meticulously planned, Agmon said.

The Israeli military was to take custody and “identify them physically and via the lists that we have and see that these are the correct people that we are receiving,” he said.

A doctor will perform a full physical examination of each, administer immediate aid as necessary.

Only after the medical screening will hostages finally be able to call their families, either by phone or video link, with counselors on hand to assist with the conversations, particularly when the hostages will be hearing bad news.

After that first family contact, hostages will be transported to hospitals, where the reunions with loved ones will occur in private. Teams of male and female doctors, including pediatricians, gynecologists and psychiatrists, will be standing by.

“Today is not going to be an easy day,” Agmon said. “We will begin the day hoping that we will really see a good picture at the end of the day.”

The reciprocal group of Palestinian prisoners were turned over to the ICRC Friday evening at the Ofer Prison in the West Bank, according to Palestinian officials. Security officials used tear gas to control a crowd gathered around the facility. The crowds broke into cheers as the transport buses appeared. One person was carried from the facility wrapped in the green Hamas flag.

Mohamed Al-Barghouti is waiting for his wife, Hanan, who has been in administrative detention for 40 days, he said. He has had no contact with her since the war began. Barghouti beamed as he spoke of his wife, but when the conversation turned to the war in Gaza, his face was somber.

“Everyone has paid a high price for this day,” he said. “We cannot feel joy, our happiness cannot be complete.”

The prisoners will be identified, will undergo medical screenings and their belongings returned, an Israeli official told The Post on the condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. The ICRC also is involved in relocating the released Palestinians to the occupied West Bank or East Jerusalem.

In Gaza, images showed signs of life that had been missing from the Strip for weeks.

In Beit Hanoun in the northwest, children carrying plastic bags gingerly picked their way through the maze of bent metal, crushed concrete and broken glass, heading southward. In the south, the streets of Khan Younis were bustling with people who for weeks had been afraid to move around. Children played in the streets and men rode bicycles.

Parker reported from Tel Aviv, Balousha from Amman, Jordan, and Dadouch from Beirut. Carrie Keller-Lynn and Lior Soroka in Tel Aviv and Molly Hennessy-Fiske in Palestine, Texas, contributed to this report.

Source link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/11/24/israel-gaza-war-pause-hostages/