Hostages’ families urge Trump to get Netanyahu to commit to entirety of deal with Hamas

Einav Zangauker, mother of hostage Matan Zangauker, speaks during a press conference in Tel Aviv on January 25, 2025. (Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90)
Einav Zangauker, mother of hostage Matan Zangauker, speaks during a press conference in Tel Aviv on January 25, 2025. (Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90)

In a weekly statement ahead of protests to demand their loved ones’ release, hostages’ families congratulate the four IDF soldiers released from captivity earlier today and call on US President Donald Trump to prevent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from failing to see through the now-10-day-old Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal until its completion.

Netanyahu’s coalition partner Itamar Ben Gvir has already bolted the government over the deal, and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has threatened to follow suit — which would topple the government — if Israel doesn’t resume fighting after the deal’s 42-day first phase.

Einav Zangauker, mother of hostage Matan Zangauker, calls on Netanyahu to “go out to the public and commit to implementing the deal in full.”

She asks Trump to “demand Netanyahu implement the deal in its entirety and immediately start negotiations on the second stage,” when Israel is to withdraw entirely from the Strip, and male hostages, including Zangauker, are to be released.

Demonstrators raise placards and chant slogans during a protest calling for the release of hostages held in Gaza since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack, in front of the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv on January 25, 2025. (Jack Guez/AFP)

Itzik Horn, whose son Iair is set to be released in the first phase, and other son Eitan only later, also urges an immediate start to negotiations on the next phase of the deal, and says, “We must bring everyone back in the second phase.”

“The agony of the hostages, the families and an entire nation won’t end until they are all back,” he says.

Yifat Calderon, whose cousin Ofer Calderon would also be released only after the deal’s first phase, says Israel “must not let Smotrich and Ben Gvir, the extremists who want to bury the hostages, thwart the deal.”

“It’s in Israel’s interest to end the war and bring everyone back,” she says.

Yotam Cohen, brother of captive soldier Nimrod Cohen — who will also be released only later in the deal — accuses Smotrich of “cynically using the IDF fallen for political needs” by “deigning to speak in the name of soldiers who have paid with their life” in his statements against the deal.

“How dare you speak about combat soldiers when you’re consigning my brother, a combat soldier, to rot in the hell of Gaza?” he asks. “How dare you speak in the name of IDF fallen when, through your actions, you are condemning to death soldiers and civilians who will be left behind?”

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