Middle East latest: Released Israeli hostage says she has ‘returned to life’
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An Israeli hostage freed on the first day of the Gaza cease-fire said Monday in her first comments since being released that she has “returned to life.”
Emily Damari, 28, was one of three hostages freed Sunday after spending 471 days in captivity.
In an Instagram story, which was shared by Israeli media, Damari thanked her family and the large protest movement that coalesced to advocate for the release of the hostages. “Thank you, thank you, thank you, I’m the happiest in the world,” she said.
Damari, a dual Israeli British citizen, returned from captivity with a bandage on one hand. Authorities said she had lost two fingers during Hamas’ cross-border attack on Oct. 7, 2023.
As Damari arrived at a hospital Sunday, she waved at a crowd that had gathered, and video later showed her joyfully reuniting with her family.
Her mother, Mandy Damari, said in a statement later Monday that Emily was “doing much better than any of us could ever have anticipated.”
The three Israeli hostages left Hamas captivity on Sunday and returned to Israel, and dozens of Palestinian prisoners walked free from Israeli jail, leaving Israelis and Palestinians torn between celebration and trepidation as the cease-fire between Israel and Hamas took hold.
Three hostages were handed over to Israeli forces — the first of 33 expected to be freed over the next six weeks in exchange for some 1,900 Palestinians. The deal follows months of negotiations.
Relatives of 3 released Israeli hostages make public comments
Relatives of the three Israeli women freed from captivity in Gaza thanked those who made their release possible and pleaded with the Israeli government to carry out the phased cease-fire deal that led to their loved ones’ release.
“Doron asked me to convey this message,” said Yamit Ashkenazi, sister of released hostage Doron Steinbrecher, in a statement at the hospital where the women are still undergoing medical evaluations. “Go out into the streets. We must carry out all the steps of the deal. Just as I was able to return to my family, everyone should return.”
The families all expressed gratitude to Israeli soldiers who fought in Gaza, and thanked those who pushed for the release of the hostages, including international mediators and U.S. Presidents Biden and Trump.
Merav Leshem Gonen, whose daughter, Romi, 24, was kidnapped from the Nova music festival, vowed Monday to keep fighting for the return of all the others. In the militant attack on Israel in 2023, more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed and about 250 were kidnapped.
Since then, Leshem Gonen has emerged as one of the loudest voices advocating for the return of the hostages, appearing nearly daily on Israeli news programs and traveling abroad.
“We are in an alternate reality in these hours, shutting out the outside world, a time in which there is nothing but family,” she posted on Facebook on Monday, after reuniting with her daughter Sunday evening near the Gaza border.
“It will take me, us, a moment to breathe her in, and to believe this reality that we have brought about together,” Leshem Gonen wrote, adding, “I promise I’ll be back.”
Palestinians returning to Rafah find their homes destroyed
Many Palestinians on Monday said they felt hesitant about leaving the shelters they fled to after being displaced by war and returning to the wreckage of their former homes in Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza.
“We wanted to come back to put up a tent during the cease-fire. As you can see it has become a ghost town. There is no water. There is nothing. There is even no leveled ground you can stay on,” said Hussein Barakat.
Those returning found homes and neighborhoods flattened in Israel’s ground and air attacks.
“We found destruction, destruction,” said Mohamed Abu al-Kheir, a Palestinian man who shelters in a tent in the city of Khan Yunis. “There is nothing to live in. There is no furniture or anything.”
As Donald Trump takes the oath of office again, the world watches with a sense that, this time, those outside the U.S. have a better idea what to expect.
Associated Press video showed large swaths of Rafah turned into rubble. People were seen searching the remains of their homes. Others searched two military vehicles that Israeli forces left behind when they withdrew from the area.
“Who wants to live in such destruction? No one will come to live here,” said Mahmoud Khamis, another Rafah resident whose house was destroyed.
The Israeli bombardment and ground attacks in the Gaza Strip have killed more than 46,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and fighters but says women and children make up more than half the fatalities.
Freed Palestinian medical student says her ‘joy is limited’
Bara’a Al-Fuqha, 22, hugged her family as she stepped off the white Red Cross bus and into the sea of cheering people welcoming the 90 Palestinians freed by Israel early Monday.
A medical student at Al Quds University in East Jerusalem before her arrest, she had spent about six months in Damon Prison. She said she was held under administrative detention — a policy of indefinite imprisonment without formal charge or trial that Israel almost exclusively uses against Palestinians. Israel says that the cases of Palestinians released as part of the exchange with Hamas for Israeli hostages all relate to state security charges.
Al-Fuqha said her conditions in Israeli prison were “terrible,” her access to food and water limited.
“It was like, when we tried to hold our heads high, the guards would do their best to hold us down,” she said.
But now, reunited with her family, Al-Fuqha displayed a sense of relief and defiance.
“Thank God, I am here with my family, I’m satisfied,” she said. “But my joy is limited, because so many among us Palestinians are being tortured and abused. Our people in Gaza are suffering. God willing, we will work to free them too.”
That reflected a wider feeling in the crowd, with many saying this release offered a small, if fleeting, moment of joy, tempered by the 15 months of death and destruction in Gaza.
Israel’s Smotrich threatens to topple government if Netanyahu doesn’t resume war
Israel’s far-right finance minister has threatened to topple Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition if he doesn’t resume the war in Gaza after the first phase of the cease-fire agreement expires in six weeks.
Bezalel Smotrich made the threat Monday, a day after the cease-fire went into effect.
“If, God forbid, the war is not resumed, I will bring the government down,” Smotrich told reporters.
Smotrich, who leads an ultranationalist religious party, voted against the deal but has remained in the governing coalition for the time being. His departure would rob Netanyahu of his parliamentary majority, setting the stage for the government’s collapse and early elections.
Smotrich said he has received assurances that Israel will resume the war after the first phase, during which 33 hostages held in Gaza are to return home and hundreds of Palestinian prisoners are to be freed. The second phase, which must still be negotiated, is to work out an end to the war and return of all remaining hostages.
“I insisted, demanded, and received an unequivocal commitment from the prime minister, the minister of defense and the the rest of my Cabinet colleagues — we will not stop this war a moment before realizing its full goals,” Smotrich said.
Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has already resigned over the cease-fire agreement.
Netanyahu, hoping to stabilize his fragile coalition, has so far offered the public no guarantees that Israel will proceed to Phase 2 of the agreement.
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