Hostage families, rallying at Sha’ar Hanegev, urge government to seal hostage deal, end Gaza war

Relatives of hostages held captive in the Gaza Strip rally at Sha’ar Hanegev, on Israel’s border with the Palestinian enclave, urging the government to seal a deal with the Hamas terror group for the release of their loved ones, all in one go.

“We are in critical days at a crossroads that won’t come again,” says Lishay Miran Lavi, the wife of Omri Miran, a captive father of two who was kidnapped from Kibbutz Nahal Oz.

“I hope so much that we won’t be disappointed again. I hope so much that the reality the decision-makers are painting will become real. That all our children will be able to sleep peacefully because their father, their brother, their uncle is at home and not in captivity or in combat,” she says.

Jerusalem decided this evening that it will send a delegation of negotiators to Qatar for hostage-ceasefire talks with Hamas, according to a senior Israeli minister’s office.

The terror group on Friday responded “positively” — with several crucial conditions — to a US-backed proposal for a 60-day ceasefire that would see the return of roughly half the remaining living hostages, and the bodies of about half of the remaining slain hostages, in five phases.

Avital Dekel-Chen, the wife of released hostage Sagui Dekel-Chen, calls the phased release of hostages “the cruelest thing the State of Israel has ever known,” adding: “You cannot imagine what it’s like to stand before our children and tell them… yes, there’s a deal, but Daddy won’t return in this deal.”

Terror groups in the Gaza Strip are holding 50 hostages, of whom 20 are believed to be alive, and 28 are confirmed dead; there are “grave concerns” about the remaining two.