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Hamas released three Israeli men from captivity in Gaza on Saturday ahead of an expected swap for Palestinian prisoners later in the day as the increasingly fragile ceasefire held into its third week.
The men were handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross in an elaborately staged ceremony in Deir al-Balah, a relatively undamaged section of the Gaza Strip.
They had been taken hostage from their homes and from a music festival during the Palestinian militant group’s assault on Israel on October 7 2023 in which about 1,200 people were killed, according to Israeli officials.
Ohad Ben Ami, 56, Or Levy, 34, and Eli Sharabi, 52 appeared pale and thin as Hamas paraded them onstage alongside its heavily armed fighters.
“The shocking images that we have seen today will not go unaddressed,” Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement, referring to their physical condition, which was markedly worse than those released in previous swaps.
A short while later, Israel began the process of releasing some 180 Palestinian prisoners, as required under the terms of the ceasefire. The vast majority have been held without trial in Israeli prisons. Less than two dozen of them were serving life sentences after being convicted of attacks on Israelis.
During 15 months of Israel’s war in Gaza nearly 48,000 people have been killed in the besieged strip, according to local officials.
Despite the latest exchange, the ceasefire’s framework is increasingly under strain because of operational hiccups and public statements by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that have underscored his reluctance to end the war, as well as US President Donald Trump’s surprise announcement this week that he wanted the US to take control of the enclave.
On Friday Hamas delayed confirmation that the swap would take place on schedule — as required by the ceasefire agreement — after complaining that Israel had not allowed tens of thousands of tents and mobile homes into Gaza.
The entry of these humanitarian supplies is required by the ceasefire agreement, a person familiar with the details said, although it is not clear when the delivery was supposed to arrive.
The need for shelter became increasingly urgent this week as winter storms lashed the coastal enclave. About 2mn people have been displaced there and are living in sprawling tent cities and the ruins of their neighbourhoods.
The future of the ceasefire has also been thrown into doubt by Netanyahu’s pledge earlier this week to resume the war with Hamas, after being told that Donald Trump favours the displacement of the entire Palestinian population of the Gaza Strip.
Trump’s proposal, which would be illegal under international law and has sparked widespread outrage in the Arab world, would wrench Gaza from Palestinian control and force its population into neighbouring countries in order to launch a reconstruction plan that would turn it into a “Riviera of the Middle East”.
The three-stage ceasefire is currently in a transition between the first and second phases, during which negotiations to bring an end to the war are supposed to take place.
In the first six-week period, Hamas was required to release 33 Israeli hostages including all children, women and men over 50. By Saturday, it had released 21 of them. This six-week period ends in the first week of March.
The group originally took about 250 people hostage on October 7, 2023. It released about 120 during a short ceasefire in November 2023 in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. Many of the remaining hostages are thought to be dead.
Last week Hamas also released five Thai farm workers who were taken captive during the cross-border raid that triggered the war.
Hamas will only begin to release the male soldiers it took captive and hand over the bodies of the dead hostages if negotiations succeed in converting the temporary ceasefire into a permanent truce. That would require Israel to withdraw its forces from Gaza.
Those talks were due to begin this week but Israel has yet to dispatch any high-level teams to Qatar or Egypt, which are mediating the agreement alongside the US.
If Netanyahu ends the war, he risks the collapse of his ruling right-wing coalition, which includes a far-right political party.
Their demands include continued combat operations, a permanent reoccupation of the Gaza Strip, and the expulsion of its Palestinian population, which chimes with Trump’s proposal.
Hamas has rejected those plans, which were also condemned by the US’s Arab and European allies.