Hostage families could send own rep to Cairo talks

Rotem Cooper, who was involved with fellow relatives of hostages several months ago in an effort to bypass the government and secretly arrange for medicine to enter the Strip in hopes of getting it to captives, tells Channel 12 news that the families are mulling sending their own representative to hostage talks as well.

“We are thinking about a serious initiative to perhaps send a family representative to Cairo, on our own. If they are not accepted in Cairo, we will send them to another state,” says the California-based Cooper, whose father Amiram, 85, is among the oldest hostages. His mother Nurit was released after 17 days in captivity.

He professes that the families do not think the government is on the same page as the families when it comes to putting the hostages first.

“We see that the government, especially the one at its head, is hemming and hawing on the issue, it seems due to political considerations,” Cooper says. “It worries us that political considerations are being put ahead of the hostages.”

He says he started to put together the project to send in the medicine already on October 8, and that several shipments were sent in, though they have no way of knowing if any of the medicine actually reached the hostages.