Hamas to release three hostages, including an American citizen
JAFFA, Israel — Hamas on Saturday said it would hand over three hostages, among them an American citizen, and Israel is expected to release 369 Palestinian prisoners, in a highly scrutinized sixth exchange days after the tenuous one-month ceasefire appeared on the brink of collapse.
Israeli American Sagui Dekel-Chen, 36, Russian Israeli Sasha Alexander Troufanov, 29, and Iair Horn, 46, who was born in Argentina, were expected to be released into International Red Cross custody Saturday morning from Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip. In previous weeks, Hamas militants have paraded hostages onto a stage, where they were forced to pose for photos before being led through a large crowd of civilians and armed Hamas fighters from the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades.
A sign on the stage Saturday draped in Palestinian and Hamas flags read 'No migration except to Jerusalem' in an apparent rebuttal to President Trump's plan to resettle Palestinians from Gaza.
The three men are residents of Kibbutz Nir Oz, where they were taken by Hamas fighters during the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel and will reunite with their family and undergo medical care after returning to Israel. Previously released hostages said their captors subjected them to physical and psychological torture.
Dekel-Chen was at work at the Kibbutz's machine shop, where he converted airport buses into mobile classrooms, when the Hamas-led assault began, according to his family. His wife, Avital, and their two young daughters survived by hiding in their home's safe room. Avital was pregnant at the time and gave birth to their third daughter two months later.
Horn, who organized Kibbutz parties and managed the community's pub, was kidnapped alongside his brother Eitan, according to the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.
Troufanov was taken hostage along with his mother, grandmother and girlfriend, who were released during a brief humanitarian pause and prisoner exchange in November 2023. Gunmen killed his father during the attack.
Some 1200 Israelis were killed and 250 others taken hostage during the surprise Hamas attack. Israel in response vowed to eliminate Hamas and launched a withering war that's killed more than 48,000 Palestinians in Gaza and decimated the coastal enclave.
As part of the three-phase ceasefire that began Jan. 19, Hamas agreed to initially release 33 Israeli hostages in exchange for a temporary halt in fighting in Gaza, release of Palestinian prisoners and surge in humanitarian aid to the Strip. The remainder of the more than 50 hostages, both dead and alive, are to be released during the deal's second phase.
The deal, however, does not put an end to the fighting and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not ruled out a return to war.
The shaky ceasefire has hit repeated bumps, perhaps the most serious on Tuesday when Hamas said it would delay hostage releases over Israel blocking the entry of tents, heavy machinery and medical supplies, among other alleged ceasefire violations. President Donald Trump warned 'all hell is going to break out' if hostages were not released and Netanyahu threatened to end the ceasefire before mediators intervened and Hamas on Thursday reversed course.
As the ceasefire agreement teetered, Trump's proposal to take 'ownership' over Gaza, develop the Strip and permanently remove its 2.2 million residents continued to spark outrage and condemnation across the Arab world. He told Fox News on Monday that Palestinians from Gaza would not have the right to return, eliciting fear and frustration among the war-traumatized population, who still face compounding humanitarian crises weeks into the ceasefire and aid surge.
In Israel, the gaunt and pale appearance of three Israeli hostages released last week raised fears over the conditions of those still in captivity.
'We are afraid to see what will be be,' Maayan Arbel, 46, told The Washington Post of the remaining hostages as she held a poster of Dekel-Chen in Tel Aviv's Hostage Square.
Previous handovers have turned chaotic when crowds jostled for glimpses of the hostages and prompted fears in Israel over their safety. In one exchange in late January, Netanyahu briefly delayed the release of Palestinian prisoners in protest, underscoring the high stakes at each step of the ceasefire.
In total, Hamas has released 21 hostages as part off the ceasefire, 5 of whom are Thai citizens kidnapped while working in Israeli fields.
Securing the release of U.S. citizens held in Gaza has been a top Trump priority, as it was for former president Joe Biden. In the fourth exchange, on Feb. 1, Hamas released U.S. citizen Keith Siegel, who was taken hostage from his home on Kibbutz Kfar Azan on Oct. 7, 2023. Another U.S. citizen held captive, Edan Alexander, 21, from New Jersey, was serving in the Israeli military and is expected to be released in the ceasefire's second phase along with other Israeli soldiers.
Hamas is believed to be holding the bodies of four more U.S. citizens killed in the Oct. 7 attack. Four other Americans taken hostage by Hamas were released in November of 2023.
Following Saturday's releases in Gaza, Israel is set to release 369 Palestinians, among them 333 who were detained from Gaza since the war began, according to the Ramallah-based Palestinian Prisoners Society. The rest of those slated for release are from the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, 24 of whom will be exiled and sent to Egypt, according to the society.
Israel did not immediately disclose how many Palestinians would be released.
More than 730 Palestinians, among them more than 200 Palestinians detained in Gaza, have been released so far in the deal. Prison conditions for Palestinians have severely worsened since Oct. 7, and released detainees say they have been subject to physical and psychological abuse and torture.
As the skies have quieted over Gaza, however, tensions are rising in the West Bank where Israeli settler violence has spiked.
On Jan. 21, Israel launched its longest-lasting raid in the occupied territory in two decades and has detained at least 380 Palestinians during raids on northern West Bank cities, villages and refugee camps, according to the Palestinian Prisoners Society.
Israel Defense Forces says it is targeting militants in places such as Jenin, Tubas and Tulkarm. Residents and rights groups say civilians have been killed or arrested in the raids and infrastructure torn up. Israeli forces have killed 44 people and more than 40,000 people have been displaced by Israeli military operations in just over three weeks, according to OCHA, the U.N. humanitarian agency.
Israeli authorities have also raided the homes of families of prisoners slated for release and warned them against holding celebrations.
Heidi Levine contributed reporting from Tel Aviv.
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Investigators say he confessed and remains unrepentant, telling them he deliberately targeted the marchers because he considered them a "Zionist Group." Divisions continue after Pearl Street attack Amid the extreme positions on the Israel-Hamas war, Run for their Lives believed most people could get behind their message. The national Run for their Lives organization has sponsored walks or runs in hundreds of cities and towns since Oct. 7, 2023, the day of the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust in which over 1,000 people were killed and 240 were taken hostage. As of June 5, 56 hostages are still being held by Hamas, although that number includes both the living and presumed dead. On June 1, as she had dozens of times in the past, Turnquist was pushing her Australian shepherd Jake in a stroller as the group made its way past the historic Boulder County Courthouse on Pearl Street pedestrian mall. 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The conflict between the marchers and counter-protesters is a microcosm of the vicious disputes that have long been on display in Boulder, where Palestinian students disrupted classes earlier this year. Turnquist, the protest marcher, said knowing the group lacked the full support of local elected officials made it harder to feel comfortable during those Sunday protests. She said she went into a Boulder shop at the start of the Gaza war while wearing a necklace with a Jewish symbol on it. The shopkeeper suggested she hide it, so she didn't become a target, she said. "One of the things I remember saying was ... the masks are going to come off and we're going to see who the antisemites are. We're going to see them for who they are. And sure enough it started happening all over," Turnquist said. "It was people that I didn't even think would be antisemites ‒ it was some friends." 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In a video interview last year, Steinmetz recounted what it was like to attend council meetings alongside pro-Palestinian protesters, including one interaction with a woman carrying a sign referencing "from the river to the sea," the rallying cry of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which called for erasing Israel. "I turned to her and said, 'Do you realize that that means you want to kill me? You want me destroyed?' But she just turned away," Steinmetz said. "Jews in Boulder and maybe Denver and probably in cities all around the world, are afraid of wearing their Jewish stars. They're taking down their mezuzahs so that no one will know that it's a Jewish house. They're not identifying themselves because they're frightened." Soliman's attack didn't happen in a vacuum Rovner, from the University of Denver, said pro-Palestinian college protests helped lay the groundwork for increased violence, in part because many students don't truly appreciate what it means to repeat and thus desensitize the meaning of chants like "globalize the intifada" and declarations that Palestine should run "from the river to the sea." Says the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs: "Calls to 'globalize the intifada' are not calls for civil disobedience, general strikes, or negotiations. They are calls for the murder of Israelis and Jews around the world and must be taken seriously by governments and law enforcement agencies." Like CU-Boulder, the University of Denver was home to an encampment of pro-Palestinian protesters last year, and Rovner said there were repeated confrontations between the protesters and Jewish students walking to class. Rovner has a close friend who often participated in the Boulder walks. "These are precisely the kinds of things that cause terrorist groups to pick up weapons to attack people," Rovner said. "When you heighten the rhetoric of hatred and demonize one country and claim to only be opposing an ideology, you are almost inevitably going to see action based on that rhetoric." Jewish scholars and community leaders say the attack on Boulder was frustratingly predictable given the sharp rise in antisemitism sparked by the war in Gaza, with escalating rhetoric, protests and demonstrations nationwide, particularly on college campus and college towns. In response to those warnings, President Donald Trump specifically targeted pro-Palestinian protesters on college campuses, launching investigations into 40 campuses that his administration has accused of not doing enough to protect the Jewish community from participants. Security and extremism experts say a significant factor in driving violence is that many protesters draw no distinction between someone who is Jewish and someone who supports Israel's attacks on Hamas in Gaza, which is home to about 2.1 million Palestinians. In April, a man firebombed Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro's house hours after a Passover celebration, telling police he targeted Shapiro over "what he wants to do to the Palestinian people." And on May 22, a man shot and killed a young couple outside the Lillian & Albert Small Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. "Free Palestine," the man shouted. "I did it for Gaza," he later told investigators. "These attacks and many more in recent months ‒ on campus, at Jewish institutions and this time at a peaceful gathering here in Boulder ‒ have targeted people whose only 'offense' is that they are Jewish. Or someone thought they were Jewish. Or they were standing as allies alongside Jews," the Rocky Mountain Anti-Defamation League said in a statement to USA TODAY. A report released last month found that antisemitic incidents across the United States in 2024 hit a record high for the fourth consecutive year. The FBI and Department of Homeland Security on June 5 issued a security alert warning that more antisemitic violence could be coming. "The ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict may motivate other violent extremists and hate crime perpetrators with similar grievances to conduct violence against Jewish and Israeli communities and their supporters," the security agencies said in the warning. "Foreign terrorist organizations also may try to exploit narratives related to the conflict to inspire attacks in the United States." Survivor returns to site of the attack Run for their Lives organizers say they remain undeterred as they gear up for this weekend's march. "This didn't happen in a vacuum. It is the result of increasingly normalized hate, dehumanizing rhetoric, and silence in the face of rising antisemitism. But we will not be deterred," Rachel Amaru, the founder of Boulder Run For Their Lives said at a June 4 rally for the victims. "We invite everyone to join us, not just with your feet, but with open hearts and minds. Choose humanity over hate, curiosity over judgment, and learning over condemnation." The day after the attack, Turnquist returned to the scene of the attack to lay flowers and display a small Israeli flag on behalf of her injured friends. Still shaken by the attack just 24 hours earlier, she visibly shook as she recounted her efforts to help the victims. "I woke up this morning and didn't want to get out of bed. I didn't want to get out of bed and didn't want to talk to my friends who were calling me. But this is when we have to get up and stand up, and we have to push back," Turnquist said. And she promised to be back walking every Sunday until all the hostages are home.
