Hostage Families Forum: Government has ‘no real plan to return the last hostage’

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum accuses the government of having “no real plan to return the last hostage” being held in the Gaza Strip, after the Prime Minister’s Office said it was bringing back high-level negotiators from hostage talks in Doha.

“A majority of the nation supports the return of all the hostages, even at the price of ending the war. Only the return of everyone in one stage will allow a process of rehabilitation and renewal for the country and the army,” the forum says.

“Hamas will not be defeated without the return of the last hostage. Until then, there will be no victory, nor even the appearance of victory.”

Terror groups in the Gaza Strip are holding 58 hostages, including 57 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, and 20 are believed to be alive. There are grave concerns for the well-being of three others, Israeli officials have said.

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, and one additional hostage, a dual American-Israeli citizen, in May as a “gesture” to the United States.

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 58 hostages.