Still frail less than a week after his release from Hamas captivity, and processing the news that his wife, Eynav, was killed during the militants’ attack on 7 October 2023, Or Levy told a crowd in Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square that he had insisted his family and doctors allow him to come.
Israelis had been shocked and angered by the gaunt appearances of Levy, 34, Eli Sharabi, 52, and Ohad Ben Ami, 56, last Saturday as they were trooped on to a stage in Gaza City and forced to read out statements before being handed to the Red Cross. After nearly 500 days in captivity, all three appeared to struggle to see in the daylight, and were so weak that armed fighters had to help them walk.
“It was important for me to understand everything you’ve done and continue to do … I genuinely feel that you all played a part in giving me my life back,” Levy told the Tel Aviv crowd on Friday.
“I may be here, but I still have many brothers and sisters in the hell of Gaza, and their time is running out.”
The three men appeared more frail than the 13 Israelis and five Thai citizens previously released in the Gaza war’s ceasefire, sparking fears that if Hamas is freeing the healthiest captives first, the next to return will be in even worse shape. For much of the Israeli public, there is a renewed sense of urgency that the remaining hostages must be brought home as quickly as possible.
Niva Wenkert, whose 23-year-old son Omer is supposed to be freed during the first 42-day phase of the truce, told Reuters on Friday that seeing the state of the three men released last week was like a punch in the gut. “I’m afraid that Omer’s life is in danger, every minute, every second,” she said.
The details emerging of how the Israelis freed in the first four weeks of the ceasefire were treated have added to the anxiety felt by the hostages’ families and supporters.
Some former hostages who spent months in Hamas’s underground tunnels said they were fed only three dates or half a pita bread a day and shared half a litre of water among several people. Accounts shared by family members in the Israeli media suggest many were regularly beaten, abused, starved and shackled in chains which meant they were unable to stand up for long periods of time.
Ran Gilboa, the father of the freed soldier Daniella Gilboa, 20, told the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth this week: “At the height of the war, there was no water, and Daniella and her friends were forced to drink filthy groundwater, causing her to contract a severe bacterial stomach infection, and she spent two weeks hovering between life and death. There were days when they had no choice but to eat donkey feed.”
The hostages’ stories have increased public pressure on Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to ensure the fragile deal does not collapse, despite calls to resume the fighting from far-right members of the coalition that have threatened to collapse his government.
It is widely believed at home and abroad that Netanyahu, afraid that losing office will leave him more vulnerable to corruption charges, has to date prioritised the survival of his government over a hostage deal.
The latest weekly poll from the Ma’ariv newspaper showed Netanyahu’s Likud party losing seats – a shift commentators attributed to Ben Ami, Levy and Sharabi’s physical condition upon release. However, public opinion is not a determining factor for the success of the ceasefire, according to Mairav Zonszein, a senior Israel analyst at the International Crisis Group thinktank.
“The way the hostages looked accelerates the public pressure to get them out faster, but that was always there. It looks bad for Netanyahu if they come out in a poor state, but getting them out is still the best thing he can do in terms of what the public thinks,” she said.
“Netanyahu wants to get back to war, because he and his partners have promised their base total victory over Hamas and a military solution, but he doesn’t want to be seen undermining the deal either. The momentum of the releases is hard to stop unless there’s a real and clear violation by Hamas.”
At the start of the week the truce looked like it was in danger of collapsing after Hamas said it would suspend this weekend’s scheduled release of three more hostages unless alleged Israeli violations, including the continued killing of Palestinians in Gaza, were addressed. In response, Israel threatened to resume the war, and Donald Trump inflamed the crisis by demanding the group release all of the remaining hostages this weekend.
By Friday, mediators appeared to have salvaged the deal, and Hamas’s smaller ally Palestinian Islamic Jihad said it would release three men as planned. Another eight living hostages are due to be released during the first 42-day stage of the ceasefire, and the remaining 68 are supposed to return in phase two.
The deal’s future is still uncertain, Zonszein said, because the Israeli government does not want to commit to its second stage, which is due to begin in early March.
“I think Bibi and Trump are going to keep trying to reshape the terms; it’s not clear yet what it is going to look like,” she said, using Netanyahu’s well-known moniker. “Ultimately, the hostages are Bibi’s secondary priority.”
