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The Israeli authorities are making preparations to welcome house dozens of hostages held incommunicado by Hamas for over a 12 months in Gaza, with out realizing whether or not they may return starved, traumatized or useless.
Thirty-three hostages are speculated to be freed within the first section of the Gaza cease-fire settlement between Israel and Hamas, within the first such main launch since a weeklong cease-fire seven weeks into the conflict. Some households have caught glimpses of their family members in Hamas-directed hostage movies. However it’s removed from clear in what situation the captives will return.
At Israeli hospitals, well being officers have been making ready remoted areas the place the hostages can start recuperating in privateness. Israel’s Well being Ministry has drafted an intensive protocol for his or her psychological and bodily therapy. There are specific considerations that they might be severely malnourished.
“Those who had been freed again then had been already poorly nourished,” Hagar Mizrahi, a senior Israeli well being ministry official, mentioned of the hostages freed through the 2023 truce. “Think about their scenario now, after an extra 400 days. We’re extraordinarily nervous about this.”
After Hamas led the Oct. 7, 2023, assault on Israel, killing about 1,200 folks and capturing about 250 others, about 105 Israeli and international hostages had been freed within the weeklong truce in November that 12 months. A couple of had been later launched in Israeli army operations, and Israeli troopers recovered the our bodies of dozens of others.
However round 98 hostages remained in Gaza, dozens of whom are presumed useless by the Israeli authorities.
Of the ladies, older males and different hostages returning beneath the primary section of this cease-fire deal, many are believed to have been held within the militant group’s warren of tunnels in Gaza, circumstances more likely to go away bodily and psychological scars.
Well being officers have been poring over every bit of intelligence — together with the hostage movies — in an effort to discern the hostages’ situation, Dr. Mizrahi mentioned. A committee of officers that features Dr. Mizrahi has decided that some had been killed.
Israeli officers say the logistics of the discharge will probably be broadly much like these through the earlier cease-fire, when 105 hostages had been launched in alternate for 240 Palestinians jailed in Israel.
In that alternate, Hamas fighters handed over hostages — largely girls and kids — to the Worldwide Committee of the Crimson Cross. The Crimson Cross’s staff ferried the captives from Gaza in a marked ambulance to Egypt earlier than taking them to Israel.
On the border crossing, Israeli intelligence brokers verified their identities. Across the identical time, Israeli safety officers launched a specified group of Palestinian girls and teenage prisoners.
This time, the Israeli authorities have established three reception factors to obtain the hostages alongside the Gaza border, in keeping with an Israeli army official. These will probably be staffed by Israeli troopers, in addition to docs and psychologists, mentioned the official, who spoke on situation of anonymity in accordance with protocol.
From there, the hostages will probably be taken to the Israeli hospitals which were making ready to take care of them, the official mentioned.
The 105 hostages launched in November 2023 got here house after roughly 50 days in captivity in Gaza. They arrived in a rustic that had essentially modified; some discovered solely then about associates and family members who had been killed within the Hamas-led assault.
At first, officers aimed to reintegrate returning hostages as shortly as attainable, in keeping with Dr. Mizrahi. Now, the well being authorities advocate that the hostages being launched stay within the hospital for not less than 4 days, if not longer, she mentioned.
Within the meantime, the hostages’ members of the family — a few of whom themselves survived captivity — can solely wait.
“Final time, we noticed the Crimson Cross transferring the hostages, and a few of them had been operating to the family, hugging them,” mentioned Einat Yehene, a medical psychologist working with the Hostage Households Discussion board, an advocacy group. “It’s not going to be simple and related this time, given the bodily and the emotional circumstances we anticipate.”
