Inside the hospital running a Hamas hostage rehab programme

Telegraph

26-04-2025

Michal Steinman becomes emotional as she approaches the floor-to-ceiling glass that looks west across a massive car park to a helipad beyond.
'I remember every moment when we stood here with the families,' said the director of nursing at Beilinson Hospital, near Tel Aviv. 'They would watch their loved ones landing. It was an amazing moment of singing and praying, all of us together at the window, watching them coming home.'
Those 'loved ones' were, of course, the hostages – and it takes a moment to realise that we are talking in probably the most famous hospital corridor in the Middle East.
Ms Steinman, 57, explains that as the doors of the ambulance opened after the short ride from the helipad, hers would be the first face the abductees would see.
She would hug them, usher them gently into the lift and prepare them to walk out onto the ward – into the gaze of a camera and the world – for the reunion that they had craved for more than 500 days.
After months of torment at the hands of Hamas, the team's first job would be to convince the hostages they really were free.
'One of them told me that when they woke up here in the morning they were afraid to open their eyes,' said Ms Steinman. 'They kept them closed in case the homecoming was a dream and they were still in Gaza.'
The Telegraph has been granted exclusive access to one of the four bespoke units tasked with coaxing newly released hostages back into the world.
It is a unique medical challenge for which there is almost no precedent.
Prof Noa Eliakim-Raz, an infectious diseases specialist, was involved in the care of some of the hostages released under the November 2023 deal.
'After that, we decided to keep the ward ready for the next ones,' she said. 'But nobody thought it would take 500 days.'
The 47-year-old tasked her team with imagining every health scenario that might affect a person abducted amid a brutal massacre – abused, starved, and held underground for months.
'We had to think about diseases we hadn't seen for years in developed countries, consequences of malnutrition, for example, limitless possibilities,' she said.
Some scientific literature was available based on soldiers captured during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, but this was of limited relevance.
'Basically, there isn't a textbook for this,' said the professor.
The team found themselves confronting issues far outside their normal medical practice. Light-dimming mechanisms, for example, for eyes accustomed to the darkness of dungeons; the precise grade of ultra-fine bed linen in case hostages returned with skin complaints that would be exacerbated by normal hospital sheets.
At one stage, Prof Eliakim-Raz found herself in a multi-disciplinary meeting to discuss bringing in a particular singer to the ward, debating the precise psychological effect that might have.
Nine released hostages have now passed through this unit since the second ceasefire began in January, including five Israel Defence Forces (IDF) spotters: Karina Ariev, Daniella Gilboa, Liri Albag, Naama Levy and Agam Berger – the young women who repeatedly warned superior officers about suspicious activity beyond the Gaza perimeter fence but were ignored.
Although they went home after a few days, their connection to the ward and the wider rehabilitation team will be – if they want it – indefinite.
'We have a connection for life,' said the professor. 'It told them, I can't fire you. Only you can fire me.'
Particularly in the case of the female spotters, much of the early rehabilitation effort centred around the tight bond existing between the soldiers – what the professor calls 'the power of the group'.
In the initial days of freedom, a major milestone could be as simple as taking a returned hostage outside to feel the sun on their face. Or, later, taking them out for a drive.
Some are still unable to drive themselves because they find the sound of horns too traumatising, so the hospital has installed a driving simulation machine upstairs.
A key early task for the professor was a sort of medical detective work – closely interviewing each returned hostage to try to work out what injuries and diseases they might have sustained over 500 days or more in captivity.
In this, they were aided by the hostages' ability to remember seemingly every detail of their ordeals.
'They literally remember everything,' said Ms Steinman. 'It's amazing – they will tell you exactly what happened on each day, to the minute, exactly how many times they were moved. They picture everything.'
So cramped and constricted were the detainees in Gaza that a number of physical injuries only came to light once they began to move around freely in hospital.
Both of the experienced women running the ward have moments that bring home the extraordinary hardship undergone by their patients.
Ms Steinman, for example, remembers finding a hostage standing by the open door of a fridge, mesmerised by the different colours of the food, having lived off pita bread and pasta for nearly a year and a half.
Prof Eliakim-Raz recalls a hostage painstakingly peeling off the layers of a sheet of toilet paper to make it last longer, as they had been forced to do in Gaza.
'It sounds like a cliché, but it makes you appreciate life more, every little thing,' she said. 'I learnt that from them.'
In reality, the first few days of freedom on the ward are a carefully controlled bubble – what Ms Steinman called 'a sort of pressure balancing'.
She said: 'It's slowly, slowly exploring themselves; really, it's being reborn.'
However, the hard work begins the day they leave.
Asked, perhaps naively, if there are good days and bad days several weeks on from their release, the professor is blunt.
'They're not in a good day now. People need to understand that they're rehabilitating and it's a very difficult and long process.'
Both clinicians echoed concerns previously raised by family members of other released hostages, that their loved ones cannot fully commit to the healing process while other captives remain in Gaza.
'If they could emphasise their own rehabilitation, maybe they could move quicker to the good days,' says Ms Steinman. 'But right now it's impossible to close the circle.'
The medical literature suggests the long-term outcomes are mixed for people who have undergone this sort of trauma.
Early ageing, inflammation, diabetes, metabolic syndromes and a lower pain threshold are common risks.
Some studies suggest that only 40 per cent are ever able to return to the kind of life they were previously leading.
In the immediate term, the reality is that none of them are rushing back to work, student life or the army.
Filling the minutes constructively is, for now, the goal – as the professor puts it: 'Managing your life and not your life manage you.'
For Ms Steinman, there is a slight paradox with the returning hostages, because while they are obviously damaged, she says they owe their survival to 'special qualities' each found within themselves during captivity that can aid them going forward.
'I was raised in a home with a father who was a Holocaust survivor,' said Ms Steinman, speaking on Holocaust Memorial Day, when sirens sound across Israel. 'I know that it's possible to come out of these horrors and to build a normal life and to have the strength to do it.
'Part of them will always stay with what happened on Oct 7 and in Gaza, but they will learn to live with that memory.'
This week, the ward stands empty – but ready. The medicine stocks are checked regularly; the store cupboard is kept full of toiletries and comfortable civilian clothes of all sizes.
Meanwhile, the war in Gaza grinds on, with little hope of a new deal to release the 24 remaining hostages any time soon.
Hamas insists on a full Israeli withdrawal as a starting condition. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, is calling for the terrorist group's extinction.
However, the team at Beilinson are proud that they can stand up the unit in 'five minutes' in the event of a miracle.
'During the time the unit is active, it's a magical place,' said Ms Steinman. 'It's like a kibbutz of light, even though you can't separate it from the other things.'
She looks out of the grand window, towards the helipad.
'They will come, they have to come,' she said. 'These walls are not losing hope.'