Deal being advanced would leave most hostages in Gaza forever, families warn
Following reports of Hamas approving list of 34 captives to be released in temporary ceasefire, relatives call on Netanyahu to strive for comprehensive deal that would free all 100
A forum representing the vast majority of the remaining 100 hostages in Gaza on Monday called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to pursue a comprehensive deal that would see all of their loved ones released, blasting the framework Jerusalem is currently pursuing that would only free roughly one-third of the captives during a temporary ceasefire.
The Hostages Forum held a Tel Aviv press conference featuring four relatives of those being held in Gaza following reports that Hamas had approved a list of 34 hostages that it is prepared to release.
Earlier Monday, a Saudi news outlet published what it said were the names of the hostages on the list, which Netanyahu’s office subsequently maintained was just a recycled list from a previous round of negotiation. A senior Hamas official had told AFP on Sunday that Hamas needed a “week of calm” to locate all of the hostages and ascertain their condition.
A Netanyahu spokesperson rejected the request on Monday, insisting that the terror group is fully up to date on the hostages.
The Hamas official stood by the group’s need for time “to communicate with the captors and identify those who are alive and those who are dead,” while adding that “Hamas has agreed to release the 34 prisoners, whether alive or dead.”
Israel is seeking to maximize the number of living hostages who will be released as part of the deal, while Hamas is looking to hold onto as many hostages as possible so long as Israel plans to resume fighting once the temporary ceasefire is over. Israeli intelligence assesses that as many as half of the hostages are still alive.
The deal being discussed is expected to last six to seven weeks and see the release of the remaining female, elderly and wounded hostages in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian security prisoners and a partial IDF withdrawal from Gaza.
Netanyahu’s office has preferred the temporary ceasefire framework, with the premier arguing that ending the war permanently in exchange for all of the hostages would allow Hamas to regain control of the Strip. Repeated polls have indicated that the majority of the Israeli public rejects Netanyahu’s approach.
Much of Israel’s security establishment has maintained that Netanyahu’s prosecution of the war contains no exit strategy since he has refused to advance a viable alternative to Hamas’s rule, thereby allowing the terror group to repeatedly return to areas briefly cleared by the IDF. The security establishment and the international community have pushed for allowing the Palestinian Authority, which enjoys limited governing powers over parts of the West Bank, to gain a foothold in Gaza in order to replace Hamas.
Netanyahu has rejected the idea out of hand, likening the PA — which backs a two-state solution — to Hamas. His far-right coalition partners have backed collapsing the PA entirely and would likely threaten to collapse the government if he considers empowering Ramallah.
The security establishment has also backed a more comprehensive deal to free the hostages, arguing that the IDF can return to Gaza if need be and that putting off the release of two-thirds of the hostages not freed in a temporary deal would likely be a death sentence for them.
That point was echoed during Monday’s Hostages Forum press conference in Tel Aviv.
Hostage Nimrod Cohen’s brother Yotam said that Israelis woke up that morning to learn that their government had put together a “Schindler’s List” of 34 hostages who “will be able to hug their families again, while 68 hostages would have their fate sealed.”
Cohen noted that the current deal could have been implemented months ago, but “the Israeli government avoided and continues to avoid paying the price necessary to save its citizens.”
Indeed, the deal under discussion is roughly the same as the first phase of a three-stage deal Israel proposed last May. Arab and US officials have told The Times of Israel that Netanyahu subsequently added conditions regarding Israel’s withdrawal from the Strip, which torpedoed those talks. However, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken insisted over the weekend that Hamas has been the reason that negotiations have repeatedly collapsed.
Blinken also suggested that the administration has never wanted to publicly blame Netanyahu for blocking a deal, even if he was, due to fear that this would lead Hamas to harden its stance.
The ceasefire that US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators are now trying to advance is still within the three-staged framework, but Israel this time around is much more open about the second and third phases not coming immediately after the first one.
Hamas is demanding assurances from the mediators that there will be some linkage between the first and subsequent phases, as it seeks a permanent ceasefire. Qatar hosted Israeli and Hamas delegations over the weekend for talks, but no breakthroughs have been reported.
“Netanyahu insists on a partial deal that will abandon the remaining hostages to a horrific and terrible death,” Cohen said at the press conference. “My brother Nimrod and the other male soldiers who were kidnapped while performing their duties and young men who escaped from the Nova music festival and managed to save many [before being captured], will rot in [Hamas’s] tunnels forever.”
“The Israeli government does not have the mandate, nor the legal or moral right, to be selectors and decide who will live and who will die,” Cohen added.
Yaron Or — whose 30-year-old son Avinatan Or was kidnapped by Hamas terrorists during the Hamas onslaught’s raid on the Nova festival — spoke to his son directly during the press conference. “The Israeli prime minister plans to leave you behind for a very long time.
“There won’t be another deal,” yelled Or. “It’s either they all get out now, or Hamas will toy with us for years as they toyed with Hadar Goldin and other hostages.”
Goldin was an IDF officer killed in battle in 2014 whose body has been held by Hamas in Gaza ever since.
Goldin’s sister also addressed the press conference and begged the government not to advance the temporary framework, which she said would divide hostage families.
“I have been standing here for a decade, fighting for the rights of my brother Hadar to return to burial in Israel… We have been saying for a decade that whoever abandons the fallen will abandon the living. Whoever does not seize this historic opportunity will turn everyone into Hadar Goldin… Look at me, I have been your warning sign for 3,800 days.”
Meirav Leshem Gonen, whose daughter Romi was also taken captive from the Nova festival, addressed incoming US president Donald Trump in English at the press conference.
“You are the most powerful and strongest leader… Please make sure all hostages are coming back home. Please make sure that you are standing with us and do whatever is needed to bring them back,” she said.
The Hostages Families Forum on Monday published and tweeted a list of all 100 hostages held in Gaza, headlined: “The real list of humanitarian hostages is revealed”:
100 חטופים.
100 שמות.
כולם הומניטריים. #עדהחטוףהאחרון#מחזיריםאותםהביתהעכשיו#הגיעהזמן#אתכולםעכשיו pic.twitter.com/8Ec53xe9sA— מטה המשפחות להחזרת החטופים והנעדרים (@BringThemHome23) January 6, 2025
Trump on Monday reiterated his threat that “all hell will break loose” if the hostages aren’t released by the time he enters office on January 20.
Asked during an interview with conservative radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt what was meant by the threat, the president-elect declined to get into specifics.
Earlier in the interview Trump said, “I’m with Israel. I think that’s pretty obvious to everybody… I do have to add, I’m also for peace. It’s time. This fight’s been going on for a long time — longer than people would understand.”
Speaking on Monday, Blinken called for a final push to secure a deal before US President Joe Biden leaves office.
“We very much want to bring this over the finish line in the next two weeks, the time we have remaining,” the US secretary of state told a news conference in South Korea when asked whether a ceasefire deal was close.
Israeli forces, which have intensified their operations in recent weeks, continued bombardments against terror targets across the enclave, killing at least 48 people and wounding 75 over the past 24 hours, according to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry, whose tolls do not distinguish between terrorists and noncombatants.
Harsh winter weather continued to exact a toll on the hundreds of thousands displaced into makeshift shelters, with officials saying a 35-day-old baby had died of exposure, at least the eighth victim of the cold in the past two weeks.
Officials from Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip said an Israeli airstrike at a school compound sheltering displaced families had wounded at least 40 people. The IDF didn’t immediately comment on the strike but has long insisted that it doesn’t target civilians, whereas Hamas hides and fights among them.
While Israel’s military says Hamas has largely been destroyed as an organized military force, its fighters continue to hold out in the rubble of Gaza, which has been largely reduced to wasteland by the 15 months of bombardment.
On Monday, three rockets were fired from Gaza, one of which hit a building in the nearby Israeli city of Sderot without causing casualties, police said.
Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel killed 1,208 people, mostly civilians, according to official Israeli data. Two hundred and fifty-one people were also taken hostage during the onslaught.
Since then, Israel’s military offensive has killed 45,854 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. The IDF claims it had killed some 18,000 combatants in battle as of November and another 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.
Agencies contributed to this report.
