The families of the 150 people thought to have been seized by Hamas militants over the weekend and taken to Gaza to be held as hostages are enduring an agonising wait for news of their loved ones as retaliatory Israeli missile strikes continue to pound the enclave.
Four days after Saturday’s atrocities, the fate of the hostages, both Israeli and foreign, remains unclear. Their relatives’ fears are being exacerbated by Hamas’s threats to kill one hostage for each new Israeli airstrike on civilian targets without warning, and by the prospect of a possible ground offensive.
Hamas has said it is seeking the release of all Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails – approximately 4,500 detainees, according to Israeli human rights group B’Tselem – in exchange for the Israeli hostages. On Monday, the group said the airstrikes had killed four hostages and their captors. According to the health ministry in the Gaza Strip, Israeli attacks have so far killed 1,100 Palestinians and wounded 5,339.
On Wednesday, both the UN secretary general, António Guterres, and Pope Francis urged the immediate release of all the hostages held in Gaza. In the meantime, the families of the kidnapped men, women and children are continuing to hope and to hunt for information.
Ahal Besorai was still waiting for news of his sister and her family, who were at home on the Be’eri kibbutz, a few miles from the Gaza border, when Hamas attacked.
“Should I cry because they are dead already? Should I be happy because maybe they are captured but still alive?” said Besorai, a life coach and resort owner who grew up on the kibbutz but lives in the Philippines. “I pray to God every day that she will be found alive with her family and we can all be reunited.”
Eli Elbag was woken on Saturday by messages from his 18-year-old daughter Liri, who had just begun her military training at the Gaza border. She told her father the militants were shooting at her. Then the messages stopped. By Saturday night, a Hamas video was circulating that showed Liri and others crowded on to a stolen Israeli military truck.
“We are watching television, constantly looking for a sign of her,” said Elbag. “We think about her all the time. All the time wondering if they’re taking caring of her, if they’re feeding her, how she’s feeling and what she’s feeling.”
Yosi Shnaider, a real estate agent in the Israeli city of Holon, was desperate for news after seeing a video of his cousin and her two young boys.
“It’s like an unbelievable bad movie, like a nightmare,” Shnaider said on Monday. “I just need information on if they are alive.”
Israel’s foreign minister, Eli Cohen, has said the country is committed to bringing the hostages home and has issued a warning to Hamas, which controls Gaza.
“We demand Hamas not to harm any of the hostages,” he said. “This war crime will not be forgiven.”
Locating and reaching the hostages in Gaza will prove difficult. Although the strip is tiny, subject to constant aerial surveillance and surrounded by Israeli ground and naval forces, the territory just over an hour from Tel Aviv remains somewhat opaque to Israeli intelligence agencies.
Some of the families of the missing are also worried by the remarks made over the weekend by Israel’s influential far-right finance minister, the settler leader Bezalel Smotrich. At a cabinet meeting late on Saturday, Smotrich urged the Israeli army to “hit Hamas brutally and not take the matter of the captives into significant consideration”.
Yotam Kipnis, who is searching for 10 members of his family who have disappeared, including his mother and father, said Smotrich did not speak for all Israelis.
“The finance minister said that he didn’t really care about the hostages as far as the war efforts go,” he said. “But I want the Israeli public and the international public to know that we do care about the hostages. They are families and our friends. They are human beings and we have to do what we can to get them released and to cease the bloodshed as quickly as we can.”
The US president, Joe Biden, confirmed on Tuesday that Americans were among the hostages being held by Hamas and said the US authorities had been instructed to “share intelligence and deploy additional experts from across the United States government to consult with and advise Israeli counterparts on hostage-recovery efforts”.
Speaking at the end of his weekly general audience to thousands of people in St Peter’s Square on Wednesday, Pope Francis called for the release of all the hostages.
“I continue to follow, with pain and apprehension, what is happening in Israel and Palestine,” he said. “So many people killed, and others wounded. I pray for those families who saw a feast day turn into a day of mourning, and I ask that the hostages be immediately released.”
The pontiff added that although “it is the right of those who are attacked to defend themselves”, he was “very worried by the total siege in which Palestinians live in Gaza, where there have also been many innocent victims”.
Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report
