Families of the roughly 240 hostages kidnapped in Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel are standing by to see if their loved ones will be among the few released from Gaza tomorrow as part of a four-day ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
Among them are Liz Hirsh Naftali, the great-aunt of 3-year-old Israeli-American Abigail Edan, whose parents were murdered by Hamas at the Kfar Aza kibbutz.
“For our family we have spent the last seven weeks worrying, wondering, praying, hoping,” Naftali told CNN. She added: “The one thing that we all hold on to is that hope now that Abigail comes home, she comes home by Friday. Friday is her 4th birthday. We need to see Abigail come out and then we will be able to believe it.”
The toddler is the youngest American hostage, and her 6- and 10-year-old siblings survived the attack by locking themselves in a closet, CBS reported.
According to CNN, Israel has notified the families of hostages set to be released on Friday.
Naftali said that the family has no confirmation that Abigail will soon be released.
“We haven’t seen any lists,” Naftali told CBS. “We are going with the belief that because she’s 3 years old, and no child should be a hostage, no child should be in this situation, that she will be early in the releasing.”
Asked about Abigail on Thursday, President Joe Biden said he’s “keeping [his] fingers crossed” that the girl will be among the hostages going home.
“I’m not prepared to give you an update until it’s done,” Biden told the media.
Ido Dan, a relative of 53-year-old Ofer Kalderon and his two kids Erez, 12, and Sahar, 16, told CNN on Thursday that, “Until we get them home and hug them and smell them and feel them, I don’t think we can celebrate yet.”
“We’re very hopeful but very nervous at the same time,” Dan added.
Qatar’s Foreign Ministry has announced that 13 women and children would be freed and a total of 50 people would be released in the coming days. In exchange, Israel would release 150 Palestinian prisoners during the break in the seven-week war.
“If there were a group of hostages from the same family they will be released together in this first batch,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Majed Al-Ansari, according to Reuters.
Now relatives of captives must endure an agonizing wait.
One mother of two hostages tweeted on Thursday that her daughters wouldn’t be released in the first batch of women and children.
Maayan Zin says Hamas snatched her kids—15-year-old Dafna and 8-year-old Ela Elyakim—from their father’s house in Kibbutz Nir Oz and that they were forced to see their dad’s murder. Zin has previously begged to swap places with her daughters and remain as a hostage herself.
Maayan Zin, the mother of Dafna (15) and Ela (8), believed to have been taken hostage by Palestinian Hamas militants during the October 7 attack, shows pictures of her daughters during an interview in her flat in the central Israeli city of Kiryat Ono near Tel Aviv on October 27, 2023.
“I’ve been informed that Dafna and Ela are not on the list of the 13 hostages to be released tomorrow,” Zin tweeted. “This is incredibly difficult for me; I long for their return.”
“I’m relieved for the other families,” she added, “and hopeful for the release of all the hostages.”
Yael Engel Lichi, the aunt of 12th-grade hostage Ofir Engel, told the New York Times, “We are at the point of collapse.”
“I am feeling like yesterday and the day before, only worse,” Lichi said of Ofir, who’d been visiting his girlfriend when Hamas attacked Kibbutz Be’eri.
The Hostage and Missing Families Forum—created by families of abductees—has been highlighting the people taken captive across its social media accounts.
They include 16-year-old Amit Shani, who was kidnapped in front of his mother; Hila Rotem Soshani, 13, taken with her mother Raaya Rotem; 17-year-old Mia Leimberg and her mom Gabriela; and brothers Yagil and Or Yaakov, ages 12 and 16 respectively, and their father Yair.
Earlier this month, the armed Palestinian group Islamic Jihad released propaganda videos with Yagil and 77-year-old Hanna Katzir, who was in a wheelchair, condemning Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for “killing us hostages.” Yagil added in his video message, “I miss my family like crazy, and my friends, and I love you all.”
Some families learned this week that they’d have to wait longer.
Emily Hand, an Irish-Israeli national who turned 9 during her captivity, is one child who won’t be set free on Friday, her family told the Irish Times.
“We remain optimistic and hope to see Emily with us in the coming days,” her family said in a statement that celebrated the news that 13 people would be released.
Emily’s father, Thomas, told the press that the experience was his “worst nightmare” for his family and that getting his daughter back safely was his “reason for living.”
Thomas, who’d initially been told Emily died, added, “If you have families and kids, just imagine one day [that] one of them is gone. The sheer terror of a nine-year old-girl down in those dark tunnels. Sheer terror and panic every hour of every day.”
“She must be saying every day: ‘Where is my daddy—why isn’t he coming to save me?’”
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