A year since hostage deal, Herzog says not freeing remaining captives a daily failure

President Isaac Herzog on Sunday warned that failure to bring home the remaining hostages held in the Gaza Strip would leave lasting trauma on the country as he stressed the responsibility the state has to see the captives returned.

Herzog spoke at an event marking one year since the first group of hostages was released from Gaza, as part of a weeklong ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, the only such agreement there has been since the war started.

Families of some of those still held in Gaza, as well as some former hostages who were released last November, held their own event, at which they panned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government for not saving the hostages.

Some 1,200 people were killed and 251 were seized as hostages on October 7 last year, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists poured through the Gaza border into Israel and rampaged through dozens of southern communities.

Israel’s subsequent ongoing military campaign is formally aimed at destroying Hamas and saving the hostages.

While noting that there have been achievements in the ongoing war, Herzog emphasized that every day that the hostages are not back in Israel “is a failure.”

“We must understand and internalize that if we do not bring them home, we will be left with a bleeding, open wound that will forever burn our souls as a society and as a nation,” Herzog said.

Herzog noted that he said as much in his recent conversations with incoming US president Donald Trump and US President Joe Biden in the White House, when the Israeli president visited the United States two weeks ago.

Returning the hostages is “the highest and most binding order between a state and its citizens,” he declared.

In November last year, a mediated truce between Israel and Hamas saw the terror group release batches of hostages every day for a week during which time Israel set free 240 Palestinian security prisoners it was holding. Though the truce was supposed to continue for several more days along with the release of more hostages, the arrangement collapsed, with Israel saying at the time that Hamas had violated the terms.

Hamas released 105 women and children during the week the truce held up in late November, and four hostages were released before that. Eight hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 37 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the military as they tried to escape their captors.

It is believed that 97 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 34 confirmed dead by the IDF. Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of two IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.

Captivity survivors and relatives of hostages still in Gaza gathered at the Tel Aviv headquarters of the Hostage Families Forum, a non-government group that represents many of the hostages’ families.

As the auditorium filled up, a slideshow projected on a large screen showed pictures of hostages reuniting with their families last November.

“A year is too long for a deal,” read a slogan with the slideshow.

Negotiators have so far failed to secure another truce-hostage deal. The Forum in a statement demanded a deal that would release all remaining hostages at once, fearing a staggered-release agreement, as outlined in previous draft proposals, would collapse before all the captives were home.

Speaking at the event were three women released during the November 2023 deal: Raz Ben Ami, whose husband Ohad Ben Ami is still captive; Gabriela Leimberg, whose partner and brother were rescued by the military three months later; and Danielle Aloni, whose brother-in-law, David Cunio, is still captive along with his brother Ariel. Aloni, and her daughter Emilia, were in the first batch of hostages released on November 24, 2023.

Michel Illouz, father of slain hostage Guy Illouz, and Yifat Zailer, sister of hostage Shiri Bibas, also spoke.

Ben Ami said the “total victory” over Hamas touted by Netanyahu as a war goal is “just big words.”

“You don’t need to be a genius to realize that doesn’t go together” with saving the hostages, she said. “We have seen that the [military] pressure kills them.”

On Saturday, Hamas claimed that a female hostage was killed in the northern Gaza Strip, with the Israel Defense Forces saying it could neither confirm nor deny it.

Leimberg said she survived captivity by imagining being reunited with her family.

“Captivity is hell,” she said. “The only light is hope.”

“It’s hard for me to believe the hostages still have hope and that they can imagine their return,” she added.

Leimberg recalled that her partner, Luis Har, and brother Fernando Merman, were slated to be released days after she was.

“We left them with a heavy heart,” she said. “Over 70 days passed before they returned in an operation.”

Har and Merman were rescued in a military operation in February 2024.

The November deal, Leimberg said, brought back “105 living hostages — more than can be brought back in a rescue mission.”

Aloni said she and her daughters still experience the trauma of their captivity — “sleep deprivation, fear of separation, fear of noise, night terrors, stranger anxiety and above all — the fear that every day we could be abducted again.”

Noting that tomorrow is the UN’s Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, she said: “We know for a fact that [the women still in captivity] are being brutally raped, molested, attacked, and abused.”

“It could easily have been your daughter,” who was kidnapped, Aloni said. “We must understand that if it happened once, it could happen a second time, and even a third.”

She assailed the government for “failing anew, every day, to bring them back.”

Zailer spoke about the pain of not knowing what happened to the Bibas family: her cousin Shiri, 5-year-old nephew Ariel, 1-year-old Kfir, and the boys’ father Yarden.

“Until there is no confirmation, they are alive, as far as we are concerned,” she says. “That’s the least they deserve.”

Last November, Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir were slated for return the very day hostilities resumed.

“What would have happened if we had waited one more day?” Zailer asked in tears. She recalled how “our heart burst with joy and panged with envy” watching the other hostages be reunited with their families.

Hamas claimed last November that Shiri Bibas and her two children, Ariel and Kfir, abducted at just 4 years old and 9 months old, respectively, had been killed in captivity. The IDF has said this cannot be confirmed, and their fate remains unknown.

“Only with a deal that brings back all the hostages can I know my family’s fate,” Zailer said.

Later, in English, she addressed international media: “We need the international community’s help. We can’t do this alone.”

Illouz, who recalled the last phone call he got from his son, said, “Nothing will erase the shame of this country… no amount of responsibility-shirking by this despicable government,” if the hostages are not returned.

He pleaded that Netanyahu “save us from our misery and put an end to our desperation.”

“The regeneration and hope of this country hinges entirely on your willingness to end the fighting in Gaza,” he said.

Netanyahu has insisted that Israel can both continue fighting and recover the rest of the captives, despite mediators insisting that the best way to get the hostages out is via a deal. Reports in recent days have suggested that senior defense officials concur, warning Netanyahu that the captives are being endangered by the ongoing war and advising him that striking a deal with Hamas is the only way to free them.

Time of Israel staff contributed to this report.