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Former hostage Sir Terry Waite revealed the terrifying conditions that victims of Hamas could face in Gaza and shared his message of hope with their famillies.
The 84-year-old who spent almost five years in captivity after being kidnapped by Islamic terrorists in Lebanon, said that the hostages being kept captive by Hamas will need to find within themselves ‘the resources to maintain hope’.
Speaking to GB News, the former special envoy for the Archbishop of Canterbury, shared his experience as a hostage of an Islamist organisation 1987, where he endured captivity for a terrifying 1,763 days.
Providing words of comfort for the distressed families, Sir Terry said: ‘Everything will be done that is possible to release them. And let’s hope it can be done without further bloodshed’.
Sir Terry said that he had ‘no idea at all, what, if anything, was happening in the outside world’, giving an indication of the treatment that may be suffered by the hostages of Hamas.
With an unknowable fate, the humanitarian shared his advise for hostages, by saying: ‘You have to be able to somehow to maintain hope – keep hope alive in yourself – that’s all you could do’.
He added: ‘You have just have to somehow find within yourself the resources to maintain hope, and say “I’m still alive today and I live for today”.’
Sir Terry was taken hostage in Lebanon by the Islamic Jihad Organisation (IJO) on 20 January 1987, while negotiating the release for an American journalist and an academic.
During the negotiations, Sir Terry was promised safe passage to meet the hostages but the IJObroke his trust and the humanitarian was ruthlessly taken captive where he would spend the first four years in solitary confinement.
He told the broadcaster: ‘Every time someone came into my cell, they could have been coming to kill me’.
Speaking to GB News , the former special envoy for the Archbishop of Canterbury, shared his experience as a hostage of an Islamist organisation 1987
Previously, the humanitarian had successfully negotiated the release of several hostages in Iran in 1980, and even negotiated directly with Libyan dictator Colonel Gaddafi during the 1984 Libyan hostage situation amid the standoff between Britain and Libya.
After his release in 1991, Sir Terry published his best-selling memoir Taken on Trust in 1994, describing his experience has a hostage and founded an organisation called Hostage international, which supports hostage families.
He continued: ‘If anybody wishes to be in touch with us, we will be there ready to give support to the family. We have trained people who ready to do that.
‘But, this is a massive problem and there are more hostage families now than possibly we could cope with’.
It comes as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak updated MPs as the Commons returned for the first time since conflict broke out last Saturday, claiming the lives of thousands of people on both sides.
He told MPs: ‘The families of some of the missing are in the public gallery today.
‘We call for the immediate release of all hostages and I say to them: we stand with you. We stand with Israel.’
Mr Sunak said the ‘terrible nature of these attacks means it is proving difficult to identify many of the deceased’.
During the negotiations, Sir Terry was promised safe passage to meet the hostages but the IJO broke his trust and the humanitarian was ruthlessly taken captive
An Israeli soldier sifts the wreckage at the Kibbutz Beeri last week, the place where 270 revellers were killed by militants during the Supernova music festival on October 7
Israeli troops patrol in armoured personnel carriers in northern Israel on October 15, close to the country’s border with Lebanon, amid skirmishes with Lebanon
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‘But with a heavy heart I can inform the House that at least six British citizens were killed,’ he said.
‘A further 10 are missing, some of whom are feared to be among the dead.’
The government’s stance was backed by Labour leader Keir Starmer, who said that Parliament must speak with ‘one voice’.
Foreign Secretary James Cleverly confirmed that around ten Britons are being held hostage by Hamas as he warned that the terrorists want to create a war between ‘the Muslim world and the wider world’.
Urging Israel to show restraint amid mounting concerns about the fate of civilians in Gaza ahead of an imminent offensive, the Foreign Secretary said Hamas was ‘not a friend to the Palestinian people’.
Mr Cleverly added that it was not ‘unreasonable’ to estimate that around ten British civilians were taken hostage by Hamas in last week’s assault – and said there were British nationals among the dead and wounded. But he added: ‘I’m really, really uncomfortable implying that there is certainty where frankly there isn’t.’
Updating MPs after the Commons returned for the first time since the bloody attacks, Mr Sunak addressed Jewish community leaders in the gallery, saying: ‘We stand with you, we stand with Israel.’
British sisters Noiya, aged 16, and Yahel, aged 13, have not been heard from since the terror group launched its attack across the border on October 7.
Their family have confirmed that the girls’ mother Lianne, who is British and was born in Bristol, was tragically killed in Kibbutz Be’eri in last weekends assault.
Babies, toddlers and teenagers are among more than 150 Israelis taken hostage after Hamas launched its murderous onslaught last weekend.
Human rights groups are busy trying to track the kidnappings as evidence of war crimes, but for their distraught families there is only a harrowing wait for news.
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu said Hamas was responsible for their care and well-being, and that Israel would ‘settle the score with anyone who harms them’.
Meanwhile, Hamas has claimed that it has hidden the hostages in Gaza but has threatened to kill them if civilian homes are bombed by the Israelis.
Urging Israel to show restraint amid mounting concerns about the fate of civilians in Gaza ahead of an imminent offensive, the Foreign Secretary said Hamas was ‘not a friend to the Palestinian people’. Pictured: On the BBC’s ‘Sunday Morning’
Earlier today, Israeli troops claimed to have killed a Hamas commander who was the mastermind behind the kibbutz massacres.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said yesterday that an airstrike in southern Gaza had killed Bilal al Kedra, who they believe was behind the devastating Kibbutz Nirim and Nir Oz mass killings last weekend.
Israel said it struck more than 100 military targets overnight, including command centres and rocket launchers, in preparations for the ground incursions.
The US announced overnight that it would send a second carrier group to the eastern Mediterranean to act as a deterrence as the possibility of the conflict broadening into regional war increases.
A spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces told CNN that the top priority in the military operation is to rescue the hostages, who are ‘most likely’ being held underground in an ‘elaborate network of tunnels’.
Since the Hamas incursion, the bloodiest single day in Israel’s 75-year history, the Israeli military says it has mobilized 360,000 reservists.
More than 1,300 Israelis have been killed, the vast majority of them civilians killed in Hamas’s initial assault on October 7.
