‘Israel choosing endless war’: 40 freed hostages demand end to fighting, return to talks
Also signed by 250 family members of hostages, letter calls renewed fighting in Gaza Strip a ‘criminal policy’ that risks lives of living hostages, disappearing the fallen
Forty survivors of Hamas captivity and 250 family members of hostages in Gaza signed a letter on Friday calling on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to halt Israel’s renewed military activities and return to the negotiating table with Hamas to secure the release of the remaining 59 hostages, warning that failure to do so would condemn the living hostages to death.
“This letter was written in blood and tears. It was drafted by our friends and families whose loved ones were killed and murdered in captivity and who are crying out: ‘Stop the fighting. Return to the negotiating table and fully complete an agreement that will return all of the hostages, even at the cost of ending the war,” the letter implored. “The military pressure is endangering them and there is nothing more urgent than returning all hostages.”
In mid-January, Israel and Hamas agreed to a hostage-ceasefire and prisoner-release deal that officially lasted 42 days and saw the terror group release 30 living hostages and the bodies of eight slain captives, while Israel released almost 2,000 terrorists and other prisoners, before the expiration of the deal’s first phase.
The deal had originally envisioned a potential second phase that would see a permanent end to the war in exchange for the release of the remaining hostages and many more Palestinian security prisoners, but Israel has refused to allow any long-term settlement that would keep Hamas as the governing power in the Strip.
“We all support [stopping the fighting],” the letter continued. “Those who returned from captivity and endured the horrors in their flesh, the families of the hostages still in Gaza and paralyzed with terror, those who received their loved ones back into an embrace, and those who were forced to bury their loved ones, knowing they could have been saved.”
The letter also said that the fighting kills living hostages and vanishes dead ones. “This isn’t a slogan, it’s reality. Forty-one hostages paid with their lives, we, their family members, paid. They could have returned for an embrace and rehabilitation, but they won’t return.”
The letter criticized the government for “choosing an endless war over saving and returning the hostages, and by doing that sacrificing them. This is a criminal policy — you do not have a mandate to sacrifice 59 hostages.”
As victims of the October 7 Hamas onslaught, the signees wrote that they are raising “a red flag and warn: a return to fighting will cost more hostages their lives and increases the risk of ‘more Ron Arads,'” a reference to the Israel Air Force pilot who went missing in action in Lebanon in 1986 and whose fate remains a mystery.
The letter ended with a call “to stop the fighting and return immediately to the negotiating table to reach a complete agreement for their return: all the hostages in exchange for the end of the war and finding a solution for the day after. If you don’t do that, the blood of the next hostage and the fate of all of the hostages will be on your hands.”
Signatories include former hostages Gadi Mozes, Keith Siegel, Ofer Calderon, Eliya Cohen, Liri Elbag, Sagi Dekel-Chen, Agam Berger, Karina Ariev, Ohad Ben Ami, Raz Ben Ami, Arbel Yehud, Ada Sagi, Shani Goren, Nili Margalit, Gabriela Leimberg, Yaffa Adar, Ditza Heiman, Ofir Engel, Amit Soussana, Keren Munder, Ruti Munder, Liam Or, Adina Moshe, Hannah Perry, Raaya Rotem, Liat Beinin Atzili, Noga Weiss, Shiri Weiss, Margalit Mozes, Rimon Kirsht Buchshtav, Sharon Alony Cunio, Danielle Aloni, Ilana Gritzewsky, Karina Engelbert, Noralin Babadilla, Meirav Tal, Jimmy Pacheco, Amit Shani, Agam Goldstein, Sahar Calderon, Erez Calderon, Shoshan Haran, Fernando Marman, Ofelia Roitman, Clara Marman and Raz Ben Ami.
Netanyahu ordered the resumption of fighting in Gaza overnight Monday-Tuesday, saying talks moving forward would be held under fire after Hamas rejected proposals to extend phase one of the ceasefire.
Hamas has insisted on sticking to the terms of the deal signed by Netanyahu in January, which required the sides to begin holding talks on phase two in early February. Israel largely refused to do so.
Phase two envisions the release of all remaining living hostages in exchange for more Palestinian prisoner releases, a permanent end to the war and a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza. Netanyahu signed on to a framework that included these stipulations but has also insisted that Israel will not leave Gaza until Hamas’s military and governing capabilities have been dismantled.
Terror groups in the Gaza Strip are holding 59 hostages, including 58 of the 251 abducted by Hamas-led terrorists on October 7, 2023.
They include the bodies of at least 35 confirmed dead by the IDF. Hamas released 30 hostages — 20 Israeli civilians, five soldiers, and five Thai nationals — and the bodies of eight slain Israeli captives during a ceasefire between January and March.
The terror group freed 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November 2023, and four hostages were released before that in the early weeks of the war.
In exchange, Israel has freed some 2,000 jailed Palestinian terrorists, security prisoners, and Gazan terror suspects detained during the war.
Eight hostages have been rescued from captivity by troops alive, and the bodies of 41 have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the Israeli military as they tried to escape their captors and the body of a soldier who was killed in 2014.
The body of another soldier killed in 2014, Lt. Hadar Goldin, is still being held by Hamas and is counted among the 59 hostages.
