Israel and Hamas Swap Hostages and Prisoners as Ceasefire Starts
(Bloomberg) -- A long-delayed ceasefire in the Gaza war began taking hold as Hamas released three hostages on Sunday in exchange for 90 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.
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The first halt in the war since November 2023 went largely as planned, although it was delayed by about three hours after Hamas failed to provide a list of the hostages it planned to free.
The pause in the devastating war, which has killed tens of thousands of people and created crises in the wider Middle East, followed months of negotiations by the administration of US President Joe Biden, Qatar and Egypt. A recent push by President-elect Donald Trump, who takes office on Monday, was crucial to getting the warring sides to reach an agreement.
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The six-week truce aims for the gradual release of 33 of the almost 100 Israeli hostages still held in Gaza, and of around 1,000 Palestinians in prison in Israel.
The three Israeli women — Romi Gonen, Doron Steinbrecher and Emily Damari, who’s also a British national — were united with their mothers at a reception facility near the Gaza border after Hamas handed them over to the Red Cross. Air Force helicopters then flew them to a hospital where they were reunited with the rest of their families and received medical treatment.
The Palestinian prisoners were released from buses early Monday morning. They included 78 residents of the West Bank.
Among the Palestinian prisoners on the list to be released were 69 women and 21 men, some of whom are minors.
Of the released Israelis, Steinbrecher, 31, and Damari, 28, were kidnapped from Kfar Aza, a kibbutz near the border with Gaza. Gonen, 24, was abducted at the Nova music festival.
They were all taken on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas — designated a terrorist organization by the US and many other countries — triggered the war by raiding southern Israel from Gaza. It killed 1,200 people and took 250 hostage. Israel’s subsequent air and ground offensive has killed more than 46,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
The war led to other Iran-backed militias, including Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, attacking Israel. Israel and Iran also exchanged direct fire twice last year, leading to intensive US and regional diplomacy to prevent the conflict from escalating further.
Biden says he hopes the truce in Gaza — as well as the one agreed between Israel and Hezbollah in November — becomes permanent. He says that will calm the Middle East and eventually help Israel broaden its diplomatic relations with Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, which is also a goal of Trump.
Israel’s economy has been strained by the war, with the government’s fiscal deficit soaring and investment in the country slumping. Israeli assets have gained in recent weeks in expectation of a ceasefire. The shekel is up 2% against the dollar this year and at its strongest since March, while Israeli stocks are among the best-performing in the world.
“The Israeli government embraces the three returnees,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said. “The Israeli government is committed to the return of all abductees and missing persons.”
Biden told reporters the ceasefire was “one of the toughest negotiations” in his career, adding he had heard the released captives were in good condition.
“Today the guns in Gaza have gone silent,” Biden said on Sunday. “Today we’re seeing hostages being released — three Israeli women held against their will in the dark tunnels for 470 days.”
The United Nations said more than 600 aid trucks entered Gaza on Sunday. A key part of the deal is to see a surge in flows of medicine and food to the territory of over 2 million people, much of which has been reduced to rubble.
Maintaining the truce and ensuring it’s extended will “require persistence” by the incoming administration of Trump, Biden said. It will need the “continuing support for our friends in the region, and the belief in diplomacy backed by deterrence.”
Trump, whose Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff joined negotiations in their concluding days, celebrated the release of hostages a day before his inauguration.
“Hostages starting to come out today! Three wonderful young women will be first,” Trump wrote on social media.
On Sunday, thousands of Israelis gathered outside the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in what has become known as Hostages Square to watch and wait as the three women were returned.
Avichai Brodutch, whose wife and three children were abducted to Gaza and released after 51 days more than a year ago, said that he has only an inkling of what the families expecting their daughters home after 15 months have endured.
Two of the women coming back on Sunday are from Brodutch’s collective community, Kfar Aza, as are three men due to be returned later in the process.
Brodutch said when he got the call in November of 2023 that his family was due out later that day, he rushed to Kfar Aza, which was still in ruins from the Hamas attack the previous month, and grabbed special objects — blankets, dolls, his wife’s handbag — to greet them when they met.
At the hospital to which they were taken, he said, “I waited when the elevators opened, I saw my children coming out the doors, it was unimaginable. I got my family reborn. They were thin and full of lice but speaking and breathing. Hostages live with wounds in their souls for their whole lives. But we have lived a miracle and I thank God for it every day.”
--With assistance from Ethan Bronner, Fadwa Hodali, Lauren Dezenski and Justin Sink.
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