Peter Beaumont & Quique Kierszenbaum
The Guardian / October 7, 2024
Many are deeply sceptical of the argument that only more military pressure will bring their loved ones back.
Jerusalem – Eli Albag had been fighting for the release of his daughter from captivity in Gaza for almost a year when he was pelted with eggs and verbally abused.
The father of Liri Albag, who is held hostage by Hamas, was protesting recently outside a political event attended by Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in the coastal city of Netanya.
There, he was attacked and shouted at by right-wing activists. “You’ve made enough noise, be quiet,” one told him. “You are cancer in the country,” another called as he was accused of being “funded by Hamas”.
Now a full year into Israel’s hostage crisis and war against Gaza, triggered by Hamas’s 7 October attack on border communities during which 251 Israeli and other citizens were abducted, advocacy for the remaining captives has become more politicised as their situation has become ever more fraught.
Incidents such as the targeting of Albag are rare amid broad support for the hostages’ families, but relatives have watched as the focus has shifted from the Israeli operation against Gaza to the conflict with Hezbollah in the north, with no movement on those still held by Hamas.
Over a long year, the hopes raised by the release of 117 hostages early in the war, including 105 in an exchange during a brief ceasefire in November 2023, have dissipated as the offensive has dragged on and more dead hostages than alive have been found during Israeli operations.
The grim news over the fate of hostages found killed has punctuated the glacial pace of negotiations for a ceasefire-for-hostages deal that critics say Netanyahu has been in no hurry to advance. Some relatives of the remaining hostages have compared their situation with being trapped in a swamp, unable to move forward.
In her new home in a kibbutz near Netanya, Batsheva Yahalomi knows what it is to see a child released, but also to have a husband who remains missing.
They had lived in Nir Oz kibbutz, where a quarter of the residents were killed or kidnapped. Batsheva’s husband, Ohad, was wounded in the initial attack. In the chaos Batsheva and her two daughters were separated from her teenage son, Eitan, and taken towards the Gaza border by motorbike. She and her daughters managed to escape, but Eitan and Ohad were abducted by different groups of men.
“At the beginning of war, I think the fact of the kidnappings and that children and women were taken was so shocking for everyone that it was urgent to get them out,” she said.
Like many among the families of the remaining hostages, Batsheva has detected a subtle change in attitudes after the impetus for a deal under which more than 100 hostages were released. Support remains still strong, but momentum has faded as other considerations have crept in.
“There are people, I think a small group of people in Israel, radical people, who have accepted situation that the hostages are there and think that there are bigger goals. But most people are supportive.
“We are all surprised how long the war in Gaza has gone on. It’s terrifying, we know each day the hell the hostages are going through. The hardest thing is to understand how they are treated. Not humanely. But worse. Thinking that they are losing hope.”
Her son, who was released after 16 days alone with his captors, has started to lose his hair and has begun sleepwalking as a result of the stress he endured.
“The children have so many questions about Ohad. Why is it taking so long? Will he come back? Is he alive, and if he is alive, how has he been treated?”
The last news she had of Ohad was in January. Since then there have been claims from inside Gaza that he was killed. “There are days when I’m really hopeful. And days when I’m losing hope. But the longer it goes in on the more difficult it is to be hopeful,” Batsheva said.
Despite the continuing agony of not knowing, she is acutely conscious that some in Israeli society have misgivings about a hostage deal even if she is desperate for one to happen.
“I think most people in Israel still believe the country should pay even a big price to get the hostages back,” she said. “The difference today is that there are small and more radical groups who you didn’t hear from before in the immediate trauma of 7 October. Now you hear some people saying if you pay that price it can encourage the same thing to happen again.
“The situation in Israel is very complicated, but I still hope that in closed rooms that everyone is doing their best. I prefer to be naive. I don’t want to confront government because it does not help bring about a solution.”
In the headquarters of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum in Tel Aviv, Noam Peri, whose father, Chaim, a veteran peace activist, was kidnapped in Nir Oz aged 79, recently heard the news she hoped her family would be spared, that he had died in a cramped tunnel 20 metres underground.
The posters of the hostages in the office of the forum dramatize the different outcomes in recent months annotated with a black marker pen, “murdered” written on several, and on only one the words “welcome home”.
From the testimonies of released hostages and other information, Noam knows that her father probably survived in Gaza for at least four months. She also believes that opportunities were missed that could have saved him.
“He was a peace activist. He believed in humankind. I spoke yesterday with my mother, wondering if what he went through had changed how he felt. I think probably not. But I can’t imagine what he went through. The parts I know are horrible. I know he was taken alive. I know he was beaten on the motorcycle that took him. I know he was taken to the tunnels. 18 December was the last sign of life. Then on 3 June we were informed he was killed in captivity.
“It is a fact my father and those he was with were alive for a long period. I won’t pretend that I know about specific actions, opportunities and what was on the table, but I know that there were opportunities.”
Noam describes meetings with diplomats and officials, including with Netanyahu. “The only person I haven’t met is [the Hamas leader Yahya] Sinwar. If I am mad at the Israeli side, it is because it is the only side I can have expectations of.”
For Noam, if there was a missed opportunity it was in the weeks after the negotiated release of hostages in November. “I think we were a bit naive,” she said. “We could see the release had happened and thought if we just work a bit more, if there is a bit more military pressure then we can go back to the negotiating.”
On the issue of military pressure, Noam is conflicted.
“I think we believed that military pressure was a necessary condition and of course we were frightened about military activity and rightly so because we know the results. Now I am angry because of the result of that pressure … yes, it killed my father. I can’t not be angry because my father and most of the other hostages who were murdered, that was related directly or indirectly” to that pressure.
For Aviva Siegel, who was held hostage for 51 days before being released as part of the November exchange, the knowledge that her husband, Keith, is still captive is painfully and visibly raw.
“Time is just going by. It’s running out. Every day he is losing more weight and losing hope. It’s just cruel to think of the terrible conditions. I was there 51 days and I lost 10 kilos. We don’t know anything. I don’t know if he is alone.
“I’m still in Gaza. I think about how I felt, how I lost hope and thought I would die there.”
Like many relatives of the remaining hostages, Aviva resents how political considerations have played into what she sees as a simple, humanitarian and viscerally-felt demand.
“I’ve had enough. A year is just too long. I can’t take it anymore, I want to ask Bibi [Netanyahu] and [president Joe] Biden what am I supposed to do when Keith is still there.
“I’d say Netanyahu knows enough what is happening to the hostages. He can’t let the hostages die slowly. I was there and I nearly died in that tunnel. It’s a cruel pity that politics has invaded something so human as the hostage situation.”
As with others who spoke to the Guardian, Aviva is profoundly sceptical of the Israeli government’s argument that only further military pressure will bring their loved ones back. More war has only brought back more bodies: “It’s the proof. It’s exactly what happens.
“I’ve been talking about what happened to me over and over and it just feels like it goes into a drawer that is filled with terrible stories that then gets closed. And all we get is dead bodies coming back.”
As Israel’s war has widened to ever more fronts beyond Gaza, the anxiety is mounting further still. “I’m worried more and more about what’s happening. I don’t know what it means for the hostages. No one is looking me in the eye and saying it will help bring them back.
“I just want to hear good news. I’m sick of waking up every morning to bad news.”
Peter Beaumont is a senior international reporter
Quique Kierszenbaum is a Jerusalem based reporter and photographer
