The dramatic moment that saved the hostage deal but left one family numb

Yahoo

28-01-2025

To everyone's surprise, Israel's hostage release deal with Hamas appears to be in better shape now than it was going into last weekend.
Yet, for one family at least, a family who have come to symbolise the mass abductions of Oct 7 more than any other, Monday's developments all but shredded any remaining hope.
Hamas's publication on Friday afternoon of the names of the four hostages they intended to release the following day triggered immediate alarm in Israel.
This was for the simple reason that the four women – Naama Levy, Daniella Gilboa, Liri Albag and Karina Ariev – were serving as IDF soldiers when they were captured, and although the exact terms of the deal have not been made public, it is widely understood that it stipulates that female civilians should be released first.
Where were the seven remaining female non-combatants from the list of 33, the public demanded.
Two names in particular were loud amid the clamour: one, an individual, 29-year-old Arbel Yehoud; the other, a whole family, of the name Bibas.
Video taken at the slaughterhouse that became Kibbutz Nir Oz on Oct 7 showed a distraught Shiri Silberman Bibas clutching her red-headed children, four-year-old Ariel and newborn Kfir, as Hamas terrorists corralled her into captivity.
Her husband, 34-year-old Yarden, was also taken.
Hamas later claimed that the mother was killed alongside her children in an IDF bombardment. Mystery has surrounded their wellbeing ever since.
Although Saturday's hostage-for-prisoners swap went ahead without incident, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, cried foul, accusing Hamas of violating the terms of the agreement.
The IDF, meanwhile, prevented returning Palestinian civilians from entering northern Gaza.
The world held its breath, conscious that the deal upon which so much hope for peace is invested might well fail to live into its second week.
However, late on Sunday night, Hamas announced that – in exchange, of course, for a proportionate number of Palestinian prisoners – it would release a further three Israelis this Thursday, in addition to another three scheduled for the following Saturday.
Consequently, Monday morning brought reports that the IDF was withdrawing from key security posts on the Netzarim corridor, the narrow fortified strip of land that runs across the centre of Gaza.
Soon, the pictures flooded in of Palestinians heading back to the north, with family members embracing, having been cut off from each other for more than a year.
Hamas – reportedly with the assistance of outside mediators – appeared to have realised that the Israelis had a point.
Consequently, far from falling apart, the deal appeared to be accelerating.
The sting, however, was in the detail.
While Arbel's name was finally on the list of three to be released, another was Agam Berger, 20, a further member of the observer unit captured from the IDF's base at Nahal Oz.
The fact that, again, a soldier – although female, although young – was being prioritised ahead of Shiri Silberman Bibas and her two small children, appeared to be a very bad sign.
It did not help that, a few hours later on Monday, Israel's government said it believed that eight out of 26 hostages still to be freed in the first phase of the deal were dead.
The authorities were said to be 'updating' the families of hostages about whom there was fear for their lives.
The Bibas family put out a statement.
'We hold on to hope and continue waiting for their return,' it read. 'Since Oct 7, when the video of the cruel abduction was published, we have been living in fear and anxiety for their fate every minute of every day.
'We continue to demand that the Israeli government and the negotiation team do everything possible to bring the family back home.'
The statement concluded: 'Until there is certainty, this is not the end for us. That has been our approach until now, and it will remain so. We continue to hope.'
On social media, a five-word phrase was going viral: 'Where are the Bibas family?'
It was aimed principally, of course, at Hamas. But, perhaps, also at Netanyahu.
Was Hamas right all along? Had the two tiny children and their mother tragically perished in an IDF bombardment in the early weeks of the war?
Why had those two red-headed icons never appeared on any list of captured minors?
Why, despite the bonus opportunity provided by Thursday's unscheduled swap, was their mother still not slated for release?
With every day that goes past, alternative theories appear increasingly far-fetched.
Among them was the idea that – as is suspected in Arbel's case – the family members are being held by a different terrorist group and are not even under Hamas control.
Or that Hamas do indeed hold them alive, but that in refusing to put them up for release they are playing some sick mind-game with the Israeli public.
Acutely conscious of their PR, particularly in the wider Muslim world, it is all but inconceivable that Hamas would leave themselves in a position of having to explain why they held their most vulnerable captives longer than necessary.
As ever in this tortured saga, there was no such thing as straightforward good news.
What turned out to be an unexpected gift to one set of loved-ones, spelt probable numbness and despair for another.
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