Israel delays release of Palestinian prisoners while six hostages are freed in Gaza

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Key Points

Hamas freed the last living Israeli hostages slated for release under a first phase ceasefire deal.
Israel has yet to release over 600 Palestinian prisoners due for release as part of the deal.
Israel’s government is due to convene a security consultation about the hostage release.

Israel says it was delaying the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners it had planned to free the day before until militant group Hamas met its conditions, underscoring the fragility of the Gaza ceasefire accord.

Freed on Saturday were three Israeli men seized from the Nova music festival and another taken while visiting family in southern Israel during the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack that triggered the 16-month war in Gaza.

The two others were held for a decade after entering Gaza on their own.

Two men in civilian clothes stand on a stage surrounded by men wearing military uniforms and balaclavas holding rifles.

Israeli hostages Tal Shoham (left) and Avera Mengisto are escorted by Hamas fighters before being handed over to the Red Cross in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip. Source: AAP / Jehad Alshrafi/AP

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said early Sunday that freeing Palestinian prisoners will be delayed until Hamas ends “humiliating ceremonies” it holds while handing over Israeli hostages.

“It has been decided to delay the release of terrorists that was planned for yesterday (Saturday) until the release of the next hostages is ensured, without the humiliating ceremonies”, Netanyahu’s office said in a statement referring to Hamas’ staged and broadcast releases of Israeli hostages in Gaza.

Palestinian prisoners yet to be released

In the Israeli-occupied West Bank and in the Gaza Strip, families were waiting for hours for their loved ones to be released from Israeli custody in exchange for the six Israelis taken back home.

“Waiting is very difficult,” said Shireen al-Hamamreh, whose brother was due for release.

“We are patient and we will remain stronger than the occupier, God willing,” she told Agence France-Presse in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club advocacy group said Israel would free 620 inmates on Saturday, most of them Gazans taken into custody during the war, but their release has stalled into the night.

Hamas spokesman Abdel Latif al-Qanou said in a statement that Israel’s “failure to comply with the release… at the agreed-upon time constitutes a blatant violation of the agreement” that has largely halted more than 15 months of devastating fighting in the Gaza Strip.

Qanou called on the truce mediators to pressure Israel to “implement its provisions without delay or obstruction”.

The Israeli sources did not provide a clear reason for the delay, which comes after an emotional two days in Israel, where the remains of hostage Shiri Bibas have been identified .

Netanyahu has said Hamas will pay “the full price” for what he termed a violation of the truce deal over Bibas’s return.

Bibas and her two young sons, among dozens taken captive during that triggered the war, had become symbols of the ordeal suffered by the Israeli hostages.

‘A real hero’: hostages return to Israel

Six Israelis, some of them dual nationals, were released earlier on Saturday, the last group of living hostages under the truce’s first phase.

The first phase of the truce has so far enabled the release of 30 captives and is due to expire in early March.

Negotiations for a second phase, which is meant to lead to a permanent end to the war, have yet to begin.

At a ceremony in Nuseirat, central Gaza, Eliya Cohen, 27, Omer Shem Tov, 22, and Israeli-Argentine Omer Wenkert, 23, waved while holding release certificates, flanked on a stage by masked Hamas militants before their handover to the Red Cross and return to Israeli soil.

They wore fake army uniforms, though they were not soldiers when abducted.

UN condemns handover over hostages' bodies as 'appalling' image

“I saw the look on his face, he’s calm, he knows he’s coming back home… He’s a real hero,” said Wenkert’s friend Rory Grosz.

Under the cold winter rain in Rafah, southern Gaza, militants handed over Tal Shoham, 40, and Avera Mengistu, 38, who both appeared dazed.

A sixth hostage, Hisham al-Sayed, 37, was later released in private and taken back to Israeli territory, the military said.

Sayed, a Bedouin Muslim, and Mengistu, an Ethiopian Jew, had been held in Gaza for about a decade after they entered the territory individually.

Sayed’s family called it “a long-awaited moment”.

Relatives of Shoham wept and embraced as they watched his handover, video released by the Israeli government showed.

Family and friends of Israeli hostage Omer Shem Tov wait for his televised release by Hamas militants at the family home in Tel Aviv. Source: AFP / John Wessels

“Tal seems well considering the circumstances. An enormous weight is lifted from us,” the family of the Austrian-Israeli dual national said.

“You’re heroes,” Shem Tov told his parents as they reunited in Israel, laughing and crying.

“You have no idea how much I dreamt of you.”

Hamas later published a video showing two Israelis still held captive in Gaza watching one of Saturday’s ceremonies from a vehicle, pleading for Netanyahu to secure their release. AFP could not confirm the authenticity of the video.

Bibas family ‘returned home to rest’

On Thursday, the first transfer of dead hostages under the truce sparked anger in Israel after analysis concluded that Shiri Bibas’s remains were not among the four bodies returned.

Hamas then admitted a possible “mix-up of bodies”, and late Friday handed over more human remains which the Bibas family said had been identified as Shiri’s.

The family said in a statement she “was murdered in captivity and has now returned home… to rest”.

Israel’s military said that, after an analysis of the remains, Palestinian militants killed the Bibas boys, Ariel and Kfir, “with their bare hands” in November 2023.

Hamas has long maintained that an Israeli air strike killed them and their mother early in the war, and on Saturday dismissed the military’s account as “baseless lies”.

Out of 251 people taken hostage during the October 2023 attack, 62 are still in Gaza including 35 the Israeli military says are dead.

The Hamas attack resulted in the deaths of 1,215 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 48,319 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory that the United Nations considers reliable.