Ex-hostage whose husband is held in Gaza urges deal that brings back all the captives

Hundreds of people attend the Hostages and Missing Families Forum’s weekly rally at Hostages Square, amid recent indications that the government could sign a deal to bring back “humanitarian” hostages, namely those who are elderly, sick or female.

The forum has demanded that any deal bring back all the hostages at once, saying that after more than 400 days in captivity they are all humanitarian cases.

Former hostage Sharon Alony Cunio, whose husband David Cunio is still in Gaza, says Israel “must not aim for a partial deal — a deal that sentences those left behind to death.”

“A partial deal is a hole in the heart of this country,” she says. “A partial deal says we are willing to abandon David and all the other men there.”

“They are no less important, no less human,” she adds.

She says being separated from her husband during last November’s truce-hostage deal was “the hardest moment of my life.”

“David looked me in the eye and said in his most frightened voice: ‘Sharon, don’t give up on me, fight for me,'” she says. “I promised him then, and I promise him now.”

Itzik Horn, father of hostages Yair and Eitan, rails against ministers who have opposed a hostage deal as a “surrender agreement.”

“It’s easy to say that when your children are sitting around the table with you,” he says. “My children have been languishing for 14 months in Gaza’s tunnels.”

“Anything that doesn’t bring them home now is a surrender,” he adds.

Noting next week’s celebration of Hanukkah, he continues: “I don’t want a miracle. I want the State of Israel, which abandoned its citizens on October 7 and has continued abandoning them for more than 14 months, to get back to its senses and fulfill its first and foremost moral duty — to bring its citizens home now.”

The Hostages Square rally takes place as a more adversarial protest rages outside the IDF headquarters on Begin Road, a block away.

Ahead of that protest, some 1,000 anti-government protesters crammed into the Begin-Kaplan junction, also known as Democracy Square.

No fewer than three stages were set up there, with speakers perorating against the government in tandem, each with their own take on how it is ruining democracy.

At one stage, set up by a group registering volunteers to engage in non-violent civil disobedience in the future, a speaker said those signing up will be given a place to sit and disrupt traffic, possibly for days on end, at a moment’s notice. He estimates such a moment will occur if, or when, the government ousts Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara or Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar.

The anti-government protesters cleared out of the vital junction at 8 p.m. to join the hostage families outside the IDF headquarters.