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The families of hostages held in Gaza have begged the Israeli government to reach a ceasefire-hostage deal during talks in Qatar – warning it is the “last chance’ to bring their loved ones home alive.
World leaders, including from the UK and the US, have piled pressure on all sides to sign an agreement, which they hope will end the unprecedented bloodshed in Gaza, bring the remaining 115 hostages home and pull the Middle East back from the brink of an all-out regional war. Britain’s foreign secretary, David Lammy, and his French counterpart visited Jerusalem on Friday in the first joint UK-France visit in more than a decade. Mr Lammy said “the time is now” for a ceasefire deal that would see the release of hostages.
In Tel Aviv on Thursday night desperate families of the hostages gathered outside Israel’s military headquarters chanting “bring them home now”.
There Yulie Ben Ami, 28, whose parents Ohad, 55 and mother Raz, 57 were kidnapped by Hamas from Kibbutz Beeri on 7 October, issued a heartfelt plea to prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the extreme-right members of his cabinet who have publicly opposed a deal. Ben Ami said her mother Raz was released in an earlier prisoner-hostage swap after 54 gruelling days inside Gaza and is still suffering from medical complications. Her father remains in Gaza.
“The talks happening right now in Doha are the last chance to bring them home alive,” she told The Independent wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the image of her father, an accountant who was last seen in a photograph shared on social media being dragged into Gaza.
“This must happen immediately because my father was taken 314 days ago, it’s almost a year,” she said. “When my mother was returned months ago, she said conditions were terrible. There was not enough food and water, hostages suffered abuse, she didn’t have medical treatment. She is still having weekly hospital visits now”.
In the same march Dany Elgar, whose brother Itzik Elgart is also a hostage, told the crowds that if Itzik dies in Gaza: “The responsibility for his blood is on the hands of those who are stalling the negotiations”.
“We hear about far-right ministers threatening and sabotaging the possibility of reaching a deal,” he said. “They prefer land over people, and don’t understand that the hostages are evidence of the greatest security, social, moral, and religious failure in the history of the State of Israel,”’ he added. Israel launched a crippling siege and unprecedented bombardment of Gaza in retaliation for the 7 October bloody attacks by Hamas in southern Israel, during which around 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 hostages taken, according to Israeli counts. At least 115 Israel and foreign hostages remain in Gaza, many are feared dead already.
Palestinian health officials said on Thursday that the death toll from Israel’s assault had risen to over 40,000 people, with a further 10,000 believed to be trapped under the rubble of the decimated strip. UN rights chief Volker Turk said on average 130 people have been killed everyday in Gaza since October, most of them women and children. “This unimaginable situation is overwhelmingly due to recurring failures by the Israeli Defense Forces to comply with the rules of war,” he added.
Pressure is mounting to reach a deal that would stop the bloodshed and could also prevent a regional war. Iran appears poised to retaliate against Israel after the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on July 31. Western countries including the UK and the US, who have deployed military hardware and personnel to the region, hope a ceasefire agreement in Gaza will defuse this risk of a wider conflict.
Diplomats briefed on the negotiations, which are taking place in the Qatari capital of Doha told The Independent talks would continue for a second day with high-level Israeli, American, Qatari and Egyptians delegations hammering out details. After that, mediation would continue between representatives of Hamas’s negotiating team and Qatar and Egyptian officials.
Mediators have spent months trying to agree out a three-phase plan first announced in May by US president Joe Biden. In it Hamas would release the hostages in exchange for a lasting cease-fire, the staggered withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and the release of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.
But both Hamas and Israel have both accused the other side of trying to scupper the deal with suggested additional conditions and clarifications.Among the most contested sticking points are Israel’s demands to retain military presence along the borders with Egypt and a line bisecting Gaza, allowing it to control movement of Palestinians between the north and south.
Some of Israel’s extreme-right politicians including finance minister Bezalel Smotrich and national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir have also maintained public opposition to any agreement calling it a “surrender” deal.
In Tel Aviv, families of the hostages said they felt their loved ones had been “abandoned” in Gaza, and were deeply worried by statements from Israeli ministers like Ben-Gvir slamming negotiations.
“I feel like if it was their sons, their mothers, their brothers, their fathers, they would do everything they could, everything possible and even impossible, to bring them home now,” Ms Ben-Ami told The Independent.
“We know that there are people alive, they need to come back as soon as possible.”
