Israel was eagerly awaiting what one official called the “miracle” release Friday of women and children taken hostage by Palestinian militants during the deadliest attack in the country’s history.
About 240 hostages were seized when militants from the Gaza Strip broke through the Hamas-ruled territory’s militarised border with Israel on October 7 and killed about 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials.
Israel has vowed to “crush” Hamas in response and unleashed a withering military campaign that Gaza’s Hamas government says has killed nearly 15,000 people in the coastal territory.
At least 10 women and children among those held hostage in Gaza are expected to be freed at 4:00 pm (1400 GMT), followed by a number of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails, according to the terms of the truce agreed between Israel and Hamas.
“We hope that the picture will be beautiful at the end of the day,” Ziv Agmon, legal adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, told reporters.
Israel, he added, “will follow the agreement, which we cannot say about Hamas”.
“With a terrorist organisation like Hamas, everything that happens in the coming days is a miracle.”
The two sides agreed to silence guns and stop bombings for four days starting Friday morning in a conflict that erupted after Hamas’ murderous raids into Israel on October 7.
Over the course of the truce, at least 50 hostages are expected to be freed, with 150 Palestinians prisoners to be released in exchange.
Agmon said the hostages would be received individually or in groups by the International Committee of the Red Cross and taken across the border and handed to the Israeli army.
Military officials “will meet each hostage and identify them physically and by the lists to see that these are the correct people”, Agmon said.
Doctors would perform a “full physical examination” of every released hostage, and they would be able to telephone family members, in a conversation that would be monitored by professionals.
“This is very important,” Agmon said.
“Because there was no connection with the hostages, we don’t know what they know,” he added.
“Many people have family members who are not alive anymore, there are children with parents that were murdered, siblings who were also murdered.”
The released hostages would then be flown to five major hospitals and medical facilities around Israel, where they would be physically reunited with their loved ones.
