On Thursday, Hamas released the bodies of four Israeli hostages, which were said to include the mother and her two children who have been afraid for a long time and came to embody the suffering of the nation after the attack on October 7, 2023.
The remains were supposed to be from Sherry Pepas and her two children, Ariel and Kafir, as well as Oded Lifshitz, who was 83 years old when he was kidnapped. Kfir, who was 9 months old when he was transferred, was the youngest prisoner. Hamas said that the four were killed with their guards in the Israeli air strikes.
“Our hearts – the hearts of an entire nation – lies in Thaters,” Israeli President Isaac Herzog said in a statement. “On behalf of the State of Israel, I bow to my head and ask for forgiveness. Forgiveness for not protecting you on that terrible day. Forgiveness for not bringing you home safely.”
The militants offered four black coffins on the stage in the Gaza Strip surrounded by banners, including one large depicting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a bullet. Thousands of people, including large numbers of convincing fighters and armed fighters, were looked at, as the coffins were loaded on the Red Cross vehicles before they were transferred to the Israeli forces.
The army held a small funeral party, at the request of families, before moving the bodies to a laboratory in Israel to determine the official identity using DNA, a process that may take up to two days. Only then families will be given the final notification.
Israeli channels did not broadcast delivery. At Square Square in Tel Aviv, where the Israelis gathered to watch the release of living hostages, a large screen showed a collection of photos and videos from Lifshitz and the Bibas family, including a KFIR child with a muffled laugh and a family wearing Batman fashion.
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The Israelis have celebrated the return of 24 hostages in recent weeks under the ceasefire, which temporarily stopped for 15 months of war. But the delivery on Thursday was a dark reminder to those who died in captivity, as the truce conversations that preceded the truce for more than a year continued.
It can also provide negotiation force in the second stage of the ceasefire that barely started. The first stage was appointed to end at the beginning of March.
The infant was younger
Kfir Bibas was only 9 months old, a red -headed infant with a non -teeth smile, when the militants stormed the family home on October 7, 2023. His brother Ariel was four years old. A video on that day showed a terrified Sherry studying the boys as the gunmen led them to Gaza.
Her husband, Yarden Pepas, was taken separately and released this month after 16 months in captivity.
Relatives in Israel clung to hope, which represents the first and second birthdays of infidels and his fifth brother. The Bibas family said in a statement on Wednesday that it would wait for “identification procedures” before admitting that their loved ones had died.
The demonstrators carry pictures of the hostages that Hamas maintains in the Gaza Strip as a video that includes Ariel Pepas, who, with his parents, Sherry and Yardine Pepas, and his brother Kfir, are held in Gaza, and he plays behind them during a protest in protest, Tel Aviv, Israel, Saturday, January 18, 2025.) AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg).
Supporters across Israel wore an orange in solidarity with the family – referring to the hair of two red boys – and it was a famous song for children in their honor.
Like the Bibas family, Oded Lifshitz was kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz, along with his wife Yocheved, who was released during a week’s ceasefire in November 2023. Oded was a journalist who had a campaign to recognize the rights of Palestinian and peace between Arabs and Jews.
The militants, led by Hamas, kidnapped 251 hostages, including about 30 children, in the October 7 attack, in which they also killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians.
More than half of the hostages, most women and children, have been issued in ceasefire agreements or other deals. The Israeli forces saved eight and regained dozens of the bodies of the people who were killed in the initial attack or who died in captivity.
It is not clear whether the ceasefire will continue
Hamas is scheduled to liberate six neighborhood hostages on Saturday, compared to hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, and it says that it will released four other bodies next week, and the first stage of the ceasefire has been completed. This will leave the militants with about 60 hostages, and it is believed that all men, about half of them have died.
A man holds a bear in the so -called “hostage field” in Tel Aviv, Israel, on February 20, 2025, after the bodies of the Israeli hostages, including the mother and her two children, were delivered to the Red Cross militants in Gaza.
AP Photo/Oded Balily
Hamas said it would not shoot the remaining prisoners without a permanent ceasefire and the full Israeli withdrawal. Netanyahu, with the full support of the Trump administration, says he is committed to destroying military capabilities, judging Hamas and returning all hostages, which are widely seen as mutual exclusive.
Trump’s proposal to remove about two million Palestinians from Gaza so that the United States can possess and rebuild it, which Netanyahu welcomed but its rejection globally by the Palestinians and the Arab countries, threw the ceasefire in an additional way.
Enthusiasm may be hesitant to liberate more hostages if you believe that the war will resume in order to exterminate the group or transfer Gaza population by force.
Israel’s military attack killed more than 48,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza, which do not distinguish between civilians and fighters in its records. Israel says it has killed more than 17,000 fighters, without providing evidence.
The attack destroyed the vast areas of Gaza, which reduces the entire neighborhoods to fields of rubble and buildings that were bombed. At its peak, the war was displaced 90 % of the population of Gaza. Many have returned to their homes to find anything left and there is no way to rebuild.
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