The Anguish of The Wait...

"Hamas said last week that it needed seven days to locate all the hostages and then another week to prepare them for release."

"Such offerings are the Hamas way of extending an olive branch. Compel Israel to cave to their terms because of domestic public fury."

"Every Hamas video taunts and the tortures the country. It knows that."

"Since the U.S. election, Hamas has posted three videos, two of which showed signs of life of hostages."

"The terrorist group has issued statements on Telegram, including one last Friday that hostages are now guarded by suicide squads."

Vivian Bercovici, journalist, Israel

Israelis react to the ceasefire announcement as they take part in a demonstration in Tel Aviv, Israel, January 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

 

Guarded by suicide squads; yet another not very subtle message for Israel: try to mount rescues and however few of your precious Israelis are left in our hands alive will no longer be among the living. This is Hamas, extracting every ounce of bitter anguish from the families of the captured innocent civilians; infants, adolescents, girls, boys, the elderly and the ill, women and men, and oh yes, Israel Defense Forces' service-men and -women among them.

Toying with the fragile emotions of Israelis; of the families whose loved ones are held by Palestinians who love dead Jews and abhor live ones. Playing with the minds of Israeli authorities mulling strategies to somehow discover the whereabouts of the hostages and mount rescues to reunite them with their families suffering the agony of loss. Teasing the poor lost souls held in their dank, airless underground prisons by forcing them to deliver videoed pleas of rescue.

In Israel, hospitals are in preparation mode to receive the hostages, broken in spirit, mind and body. Hostages out of Gaza after having suffered dread privation, torture, fear and hopelessness. Is there, could there ever be a cure for relentless infliction of pain on helpless people? Of clearing the confusion from the minds of captured children whose vacant eyes abandoned the search for their parents?

Captured terrorists under interrogation revealed details of the conditions of the hostages. The supposition is that the hostages, men and women, girls and boys, and fragile infants are all in failing health. How could it be otherwise? Imprisoned deep in tunnels from the time of their capture 15 months earlier. Given scant food and water, and no opportunity for hygiene. There are reports that many among them are incapable now of standing on their own.

 

Photographs of some of those taken hostage by Hamas in Tel Aviv, Israel, on October 18, 2023.

Leon Neal/Getty Images

 

Imagine a crowded, dank and airless dungeon, the air putrid with human waste, and barely breathable, lacking sufficient oxygen. A total absence of natural light. Among them are those who have been bound or chained for prolonged periods. And those who have been repeatedly raped -- both men and women, and of course, adolescents. 

Among Israelis, most oppose any agreement where all hostages are not simultaneously freed. And certainly they are not agreeable to a ceasefire agreement under any conditions. Yet saving the hostages is of primary importance. Even so, Israeli negotiators speak of the reality of the situation, only one deal has been eked out and that is the hand they and others must work with. To secure the freedom of the hostages, even as the dire need is acknowledged to destroy the capabilities of terrorists to continue mounting deadly attacks, as they are sworn to do.

The conditions stipulated in the agreement are not by any stretch of the imagination optimum for those waiting in agony to see their loved ones, for those being held in these inhuman conditions to breathe free and scent a glimmer of  hope for their future. It will take three months, at release intervals, for the first stage of the release of 33 hostages to play out. Israel is holding its collective breath for baby Kfir and Ariel, now two and five, with their mother Shiri Bibas, to be released.

Early in their capture, Hamas had told the children's father that his wife and children were dead, struck in an Israel airstrike, though never confirmed. The video of that little drama was one of the first ones released by Hamas. In return for the 98 Israeli hostages --both dead and alive -- released bit by bit, Israel has pledged to release no fewer than a thousand Palestinian terrorists, some of whom were convicted of dreadful crimes.

Relatives and friends of people killed and abducted by Hamas and taken into Gaza, react to the ceasefire announcement as they take part in a demonstration in Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)