Hostage families hail ‘historic opportunity,’ urge Trump to put ‘maximum pressure’ on Hamas

By Charlie Summers

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5 October 2025, 5:37 pm

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Hostage family members Udi Goren (left), Michel Illouz (center) and Einav Zangauker (right) hold a press conference outside the home of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, calling on him to push forward with a US-backed hostage-ceasefire proposal on October 5, 2025. (Charlie Summers/Times of Israel)

Amid mounting hope for a deal, hostage families outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s home in Jerusalem call on the premier to follow through with a US-proposed plan to end the war and return the hostages.

“We won’t be satisfied by statements alone; this is the time for action,” says Udi Goren, cousin of slain hostage Tal Haimi. “The responsibility is yours and yours only, prime minister.”

“Now that it is almost here, we cannot let this opportunity fade away; we cannot let this historic deal once again be sacrificed on the altar of politics,” he warns.

Addressing US President Donald Trump, Goren urges the American leader to see the deal through to its end.

“From the moment you took office, hostages began to come back home. Now is the most crucial moment of all… you’ve put forth a great plan and now we need your continued leadership to see it through to completion,” he says.

Goren also calls on the world to “apply maximum pressure on Hamas to commit to this historic opportunity for peace.” Under the plan, the terror group will have a 72-hour window to release all remaining hostages; however Hamas officials earlier today called the provision “unrealistic.”

Families of Israelis held hostage by Hamas in Gaza, in a sukkah outside the PM’s residence in Jerusalem, with photographs of the hostages, on October 05, 2025. (Chaim Goldberg/FLASH90)

The families have erected a sukkah, a makeshift outdoor hut used by Jews during the upcoming Sukkot holiday, and vow to stay there until their loved ones are returned in the proposal now on the table.

“We will stay here, here we will struggle and stand together until the moment that the agreements are signed and the hostages return home,” says Einav Zangauker, the mother of hostage Matan Zangauker. “My biggest dream, to hug Matan back, can come true — and it depends only on Netanyahu.”

“We have learned from and were hurt by the sabotage of deals in the past; ministers have even boasted about it, but this time we will not let the deal fall through,” she vows.

Later this evening, hostage families are expected to hold a demonstration outside Netanyahu’s home in Jerusalem in support of the US-backed proposal, exhorting the prime minister to see it through to completion.