Group dances, sings songs of hope and peace at Hostages Square in Tel Aviv

While most of the growing crowd in Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square projects cautious optimism after the overnight announcement of a deal to release the 48 remaining hostages, a small group in the middle of the plaza has broken out in celebratory song and dance.

The impromptu group sings a collection of Israeli and Jewish folk songs and standards, from “Hava Nagila” to songs professing a hope for peace and a brighter future, like “Od Yavo Shalom Aleinu,” or “Peace will still come to us,” and “Bashana Haba’a,” or “Next year.”

They also sing “Shir L’Shalom,” or “A song for peace,” which former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin famously sang at a Tel Aviv rally shortly before he was assassinated in 1995.

The group dances in place and occasionally in a circle, a staple of Israeli dance.

“This is the most exciting day we have, that we could have expected,” says Rachel Shani Stopper, one of the leaders of the group. “We left our offices and came as is.”

When the hostages are released, she says, “It’s impossible to imagine what it will be like when we bring them to the country, walking on the soil of the land of Israel.”

Shani Stopper, from the central city of Kfar Saba, comes to Hostages Square for the rallies every Saturday but says she has never sung here like this. She says that for her, singing was more a natural reflex than an active choice.

“For two years we’ve held the sadness, pain and frustration, and now it’s just coming out, you can’t control it,” she says. “Yes, we’re waiting to see them here, but the happiness that it’s signed that there’s an agreement, that brings it all out.”