‘We feel the claustrophobia every minute’: Hostages’ families build mock Hamas tunnel

Tunnel recreated in Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square to raise awareness of the plight of the hostages after 100 days in captivity

  • Relatives of Israeli hostages from the Bibas family stand at the exit of a simulation tunnel inaugurated during a rally marking 100 days since Israelis were taken hostage by Hamas terrorists on October 7, in an initiative of the Israeli Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum, at the Hostages Plaza in Tel Aviv on January 13, 2024. (Marco Longari / AFP)
    Relatives of Israeli hostages from the Bibas family stand at the exit of a simulation tunnel inaugurated during a rally marking 100 days since Israelis were taken hostage by Hamas terrorists on October 7, in an initiative of the Israeli Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum, at the Hostages Plaza in Tel Aviv on January 13, 2024. (Marco Longari / AFP)
  • Relatives hold a portrait of Israeli hostage Abraham Munder, as they exit a simulation tunnel inaugurated during a rally marking 100 days since Israelis were taken hostage by Hamas terrorists on October 7, in an initiative of the Israeli Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum, at the Hostages Plaza in Tel Aviv on January 13, 2024. (Marco Longari / AFP)
    Relatives hold a portrait of Israeli hostage Abraham Munder, as they exit a simulation tunnel inaugurated during a rally marking 100 days since Israelis were taken hostage by Hamas terrorists on October 7, in an initiative of the Israeli Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum, at the Hostages Plaza in Tel Aviv on January 13, 2024. (Marco Longari / AFP)
  • A relative carries a portrait of Israeli hostage Itay Chen in a simulation tunnel inaugurated during a rally marking 100 days since Israelis were taken hostage by Hamas terrorists on October 7, in an initiative of the Israeli Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum, at the Hostages Plaza in Tel Aviv on January 13, 2024. (Marco Longari / AFP)
    A relative carries a portrait of Israeli hostage Itay Chen in a simulation tunnel inaugurated during a rally marking 100 days since Israelis were taken hostage by Hamas terrorists on October 7, in an initiative of the Israeli Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum, at the Hostages Plaza in Tel Aviv on January 13, 2024. (Marco Longari / AFP)
  • A mockup of a Hamas tunnel built in Tel Aviv's Hostages Square by family members to draw attention to the plight of the captives on January 13, 2024. (Courtesy/Hostages and Missing Families Forum)
    A mockup of a Hamas tunnel built in Tel Aviv's Hostages Square by family members to draw attention to the plight of the captives on January 13, 2024. (Courtesy/Hostages and Missing Families Forum)
  • Members of the public stand at the exit of a simulation tunnel inaugurated during a rally marking 100 days since Israelis were taken hostage by Hamas terrorists on October 7, in an initiative of the Israeli Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum, at the Hostages Plaza in Tel Aviv on January 13, 2024. (Marco Longari / AFP)
    Members of the public stand at the exit of a simulation tunnel inaugurated during a rally marking 100 days since Israelis were taken hostage by Hamas terrorists on October 7, in an initiative of the Israeli Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum, at the Hostages Plaza in Tel Aviv on January 13, 2024. (Marco Longari / AFP)
  • People gather near a simulation tunnel ahead of its inauguration in a rally marking a hundred days since Israelis were taken hostage by the Hamas terror group on October 7, in an initiative of the Israeli Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum Headquarters at the Hostages Plaza in Tel Aviv on January 13, 2024. (Marco LONGARI / AFP)
    People gather near a simulation tunnel ahead of its inauguration in a rally marking a hundred days since Israelis were taken hostage by the Hamas terror group on October 7, in an initiative of the Israeli Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum Headquarters at the Hostages Plaza in Tel Aviv on January 13, 2024. (Marco LONGARI / AFP)
  • Ela Ben Ami, holding a poster of her father Ohad who is held hostage in Gaza, at the exit of a simulation tunnel inaugurated during a rally marking a hundred days since Israelis were taken hostage by the Hamas terror group on October 7, in an initiative of the Israeli Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum at the Hostages Plaza in Tel Aviv on January 13, 2024 (Marco Longari / AFP)
    Ela Ben Ami, holding a poster of her father Ohad who is held hostage in Gaza, at the exit of a simulation tunnel inaugurated during a rally marking a hundred days since Israelis were taken hostage by the Hamas terror group on October 7, in an initiative of the Israeli Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum at the Hostages Plaza in Tel Aviv on January 13, 2024 (Marco Longari / AFP)

At Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square, families of those kidnapped during the Hamas-led onslaught on October 7 have created a large mockup of one of the terror group’s tunnels in the Gaza Strip, seeking to raise awareness for their loved ones’ plight as they mark 100 days of captivity on Sunday.

The mock tunnel was built to resemble the dire conditions hostages face in Hamas’s tunnel, such as cramped spaces and lack of daylight.

In the exhibit, the families wrote the names of the hostages and messages of hope on the tunnel walls, as well as etching tally marks to represent the days that have passed since they were taken captive.

“I think we need public pressure, there’s no other way,” Dorit Gvili of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum told Channel 12 News on Friday.

“We must keep them in mind. We must say constantly that these people are alive and need to be returned. We feel the claustrophobia here every minute.”

The tunnel was formally unveiled to the public on Saturday.

Ela Ben Ami, whose parents were taken hostage from their home in Kibbutz Be’eri by Hamas terrorists on October 7, visited the reconstruction on Saturday.

Her mother Raz was released during the November temporary ceasefire, but her father Ohad remains in Gaza. The two were kidnapped separately and were not held together.

Ela Ben Ami, holding a poster of her father Ohad who is held hostage in Gaza, walks through an installation of a Hamas tunnel in Hostages Square, Tel Aviv, January 13, 2024. (Screen grab used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law)

“I am shaking. For nearly 100 days [the hostages] haven’t been able to leave this,” she told Channel 12, holding a poster of her father. “I know that my [father] is injured. He has vertigo but I don’t know now what medications he would need,” she says in reference to an Israeli government announcement on Friday that vital medications would be transferred to the hostages in the coming days.

“I don’t know if she went through this,” Ela said of her mother. “She hasn’t told me. But I now know why she can’t sleep at night, she is in a terrible condition,” she said.

Ela Ben Ami calls on government members to come to Tel Aviv and experience the tunnel installation and understand why a deal must be made immediately for the hostages to be released. “I call on everyone to come to the square, to stand with us so that we aren’t alone,” she said.

A mockup of a Hamas tunnel built in Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square by family members to draw attention to the plight of the captives on January 13, 2024. (Courtesy/Hostages and Missing Families Forum)

Sunday will mark 100 days in captivity for hostages such as Romi Gonen, 23, who was kidnapped from the Supernova festival near Re’im. During the abduction, she was shot in her arm.

“We know she’s alive, we know she’s in a tunnel, and we know she wasn’t doing well and is unable to move her arm,” her mother, Meriav Leshem Gonen, told Channel 12.

Romi Gonen, who was taken captive in Gaza by Hamas terrorists on October 7, as they assaulted the Supernova desert rave (Courtesy)

“She bandages it herself every few days when they get supplies.”

She added that the urgency to get her daughter out of Gaza was greater in light of scenes of sexual violence on October 7 and testimonies about sexual abuse provided by hostages who have been released.

Demonstrators gather for a rally calling for the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip, outside of United Nations headquarters in New York City, on December 12, 2024. (Arie Leib Abrams/Flash90)

Dekel Liphsitz, whose 83-year-old grandfather Oded is being held hostage, told Channel 12 that the families felt as though Israel was dragging out the process to get the hostages back in an attempt to get a better deal.

“They have one guideline, and they’re not willing to back down from it,” he said. “But time is passing, and in the end, they’ll succeed and pat themselves on the back, but we’ll get 136 coffins back.”

The Liphsitz family was told by a released hostage who was held in the same room as Oded that he had survived October 7 but that he kept passing out because of blood pressure issues. Once, when he fainted, he was taken away and she hadn’t seen him since.

This image from video published January 11, 2024, shows a Hamas tunnel in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis where the IDF believes hostages were held by the terror group. (Israel Defense Forces)

Like Oded, 22-year-old Omer Wenkert is at risk from potentially life-threatening medical issues.

His mother, Niva, told Channel 12 that he suffers from colitis, a chronic digestive disease that, if untreated, can lead to death.

Tsili Wenkert, grandmother of Omer Wenkert who was taken captive by Hamas terrorists on October 7 from Supernova, poses next to a portrait of her grandson in the city of Gedera on October 25, 2023 (GIL COHEN-MAGEN / AFP)

Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on October 7, killing some 1,200 people in Israel, most of them civilians, and with around 240 others taken hostage, of which 136 remain in captivity after a temporary truce that saw the release of 105.

Four hostages were released prior to that, and one was rescued by troops. The bodies of eight hostages have also been recovered and three hostages were mistakenly killed by the military. The IDF has confirmed the deaths of 25 of those still held by Hamas, citing new intelligence and findings obtained by troops operating in Gaza.

Hamas has also been holding the bodies of fallen IDF soldiers Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin since 2014, as well as two Israeli civilians, Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed, who are both thought to be alive after entering the Strip of their own accord in 2014 and 2015 respectively.

People walk by photographs of civilians held hostage by Hamas terrorists in Gaza, Tel Aviv, January 4, 2023. (Miriam Alster/Flash90)

According to the Hostages’ Forum, 75 percent of the remaining hostages suffer from chronic uncommunicable diseases. In the past few months, they were not given access to the Red Cross and did not receive their essential medications.

A statement by the Prime Minister’s Office on Friday said that Israel had reached a deal with Hamas that would see the hostages receive vital medications. The deal will reportedly be facilitated by the Red Cross, and the Hostages’ Forum demanded to receive proof that the medications were received.

Sunday will be the 100th day of the war and the hostages’ captivity and will be marked with a march starting at the Super Nova rave site, where Hamas terrorists slaughtered some 360 people during the brutal rampage. Participants will then continue to Jerusalem and then Tel Aviv, where the march will end with a 24-hour protest.

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