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Hamas has released two of the six Israeli hostages expected to be freed from Gaza, coinciding with a fragile ceasefire nearing the end of its initial stage. Avera Mengistu, a 39-year-old Ethiopian-Israeli man with reported mental health issues and held since 2014, and Tal Shoham, 40, were handed over in Rafah, southern Gaza, to the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Mengistu had entered Gaza independently, while Shoham was captured during a Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. The Israeli military confirmed their release, stating that the Red Cross facilitated their transfer to southern Israel.
Eliya Cohen, 27, Omer Shem Tov, 22, and Omer Wenkert, 23, are scheduled to be released later, along with Hisham al-Sayed, a 36-year-old Palestinian Bedouin with Israeli nationality, also considered mentally ill and held since 2015.
In a reciprocation agreement, Israel plans to release 600 Palestinian prisoners, including several detained without formal charges, and 110 serving life or long sentences for violence against Israelis. With this exchange, Hamas will have released 29 hostages, exchanging four deceased and more than 1,600 Palestinian prisoners.
These six individuals represent the last living hostages in the current exchange phase, set to conclude on Thursday with the release of four additional bodies. Negotiations for the second phase have not yet commenced, but they could potentially end the 15-month conflict in return for freeing approximately 60 remaining hostages, which include male soldiers and others presumed dead.
The initial six-week stage nearly faltered, prompting interventions from the United States, Egypt, and Qatar to maintain progress. A recent incident involved Hamas releasing an unidentified body instead of that of Shiri Bibas, a 32-year-old Israeli mother whose two young children had been captured with her in October, and whose bodies were released earlier in the week.
Late on Friday, another body identified as Bibas was released, with Hamas attributing the mix-up to chaos in the battered Palestinian enclave. In Israel, the Bibas family’s capture and subsequent events have become emblematic of Hamas’s brutality and the Israeli authorities’ failure to protect its citizens.
The Israeli military reported that post-mortem examinations indicated the Bibas children were murdered during captivity, contradicting Hamas’s claim they were victims of an Israeli airstrike. Israeli military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari stated, “The terrorists did not shoot the two young boys — they killed them with their bare hands. Afterwards, they committed horrific acts to cover up these atrocities.”
Despite challenges in the first phase of the ceasefire, Israel has sent a low-level negotiation team to Cairo to discuss the second phase, though progress remains limited. Hamas has expressed willingness to pursue the ongoing negotiations.
Hamas’s October 7 cross-border raid resulted in at least 1,200 Israeli fatalities and approximately 250 hostages, according to local authorities. Israel’s retaliatory actions have reportedly led to the deaths of nearly 50,000 Palestinians, with health officials in Gaza describing a dire humanitarian situation affecting over 2.3 million residents.