When Witkoff took to the lectern, the crowd broke out in enthusiastic applause and chants of “Thank you, Trump!” But, when he tried to mention Netanyahu’s name, his words were drowned out by jeers that lasted long enough for Kushner to be seen giggling uncomfortably behind him. Netanyahu’s son Yair later lashed out, claiming, outlandishly, that the booing protesters were “funded by Qatar.” Even some in the opposition complained that the booing was impolitic. But the Israeli public follows the news. It knows that Netanyahu and his ministers have repeatedly stalled and torpedoed past attempts to bring back the hostages and end the war. Some ministers even voted against a previous deal to bring back the children then still held in captivity. (That deal went into effect, anyway.) It takes a level of stony fanaticism, not to mention downright cruelty, to do that. Israelis will not soon forget it.
For the hostages, a lengthy and uncertain process of recovery now begins. During the weekend, I spoke by phone to Hagai Levine, who heads the medical team for the organization of hostages’ families. “The feeling is nerve-racking,” he said, adding that many health experts working with the released captives felt a certain “duality.” On the one hand, there is by now a body of knowledge about how to manage the care of returned hostages. There will, for example, be an emphasis on trying to place hostages who had been together in captivity in the same hospital, because of their need to remain close and provide support to one another. On the other hand, as Levine told me, “this is the first time we are receiving people after two years. We can’t stick to protocol.” Though the group of twenty seemed in relatively good health upon their release, some have reportedly suffered severe physical abuse. And some were left by themselves for long stretches. Alon Ohel, a twenty-four-year-old pianist who was kidnapped from the Nova music festival, was kept in a tunnel beneath Gaza, along with three other abductees. Those three were released this past winter, during the last hostage exchange. Ohel remained alone, and was reportedly isolated since then.
Adding to the uncertainty is the question of the hostages’ medical changes over time, Levine said. A captive who has lost forty pounds, for example, may actually have lost eighty pounds but gained some of it back before his release. During the past two years, some of the captives may have experienced the decline, or even failure, of vital organs. “In the first days, people think that, because the hostages are walking, they are speaking, maybe the situation is not so bad,” Levine said, in a briefing with reporters. But, he went on, “We realized over time that there are internal injuries like renal problems, neurological problems, and cardiac problems that may be increased, including accelerated aging.”
Still, Levine chose to focus on the hopeful side of this release. For one thing, he told me, all surviving hostages will be coming home. This means that those released won’t be faced with the burden and guilt associated with knowing that others have been left behind; nor will they confront the impossible prospect of becoming instant advocates, taking up the very public fight for the release of others. “This gives us an opportunity that didn’t exist before, when they were constantly under the shadow of the other hostages and couldn’t devote themselves to their own rehabilitation,” Levine said.
Speaking at a rally in southern Israel ahead of the release, Sagui Dekel-Chen, who spent almost five hundred days in captivity, addressed the relatives expecting their loved ones: “You’re allowed to smile and hug, but, please, not too strongly,” he said. “Don’t spill information on them, because they haven’t been told anything. Don’t rush to tell them how much you suffered and how much you fought for them. It’s heavy for them to carry, and they already know.” He then turned to his fellow former captives. “Brothers. You are finally allowed to break down everything you’ve been holding in. Let it all out, from the stomach, everything you couldn’t do there at night on a concrete floor surrounded by friends and captors.”
As the hostages reunited with their families, Israel was preparing to release almost two thousand Palestinian prisoners and detainees it had guaranteed to free in exchange. Two hundred and fifty of them had been serving life sentences, many for carrying out attacks that killed Israeli civilians. The second phase of the ceasefire agreement—which will address the future rule of Gaza, the disarmament of Hamas, and the timeline and extent of a withdrawal of Israeli troops from the territory—is still undecided, and will likely take many more weeks to negotiate. A summit on the subject is set to begin later on Monday, in Egypt. At Trump’s request, Netanyahu received a last-minute invitation from the Egyptian President, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Axios reported. He declined to attend, citing the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah as an excuse. Perhaps he reasoned that it would not serve him to be seen in attendance as a group of Arab and Muslim countries, along with others, sketched out the parameters of a future Palestinian state—something he has steadfastly insisted will never happen.
Across the fence, in Gaza, Palestinians had been trekking with their belongings for days, since preparations for the ceasefire were announced. Many returned to their homes over the weekend, only to find them under heaps of rubble. Ezzideen Shehab, a Gaza-based doctor, lost more than seventy members of his extended family. On Saturday, he wrote on social media about his experience of homecoming. “Today we learned that our homes, our land, and our entire neighborhood, every house belonging to our family and our neighbors, have been completely erased,” he wrote. “We were the victims of an annihilation ignited by Hamas from within our homes, only for the Israeli army to descend upon us and unleash its full cruelty on the civilians of Gaza, while Hamas’s fighters vanished into their tunnels.”
