The agony of 24 hostages is over. The Gaza war isn’t
HAMAS murdered and kidnapped 1,400 people on October 7th it triggered the biggest Middle East crisis in a decade and a brutal war in Gaza. On November 24th a small number of the roughly 240 captives tasted freedom again amid a four-day truce in the fighting. Israeli officials confirmed that 13 Israeli hostages had been handed over to the Red Cross; the authorities in Qatar said another 11 captives, ten holding Thai passports and one from the Philippines, were being released.
At the Hatzerim air base in southern Israel, helicopters were standing by to whisk the released Israeli victims, all women or children, to hospitals. Their horrific ordeal may be over but at least 200 other captives remain in Gaza and Israel’s war against Hamas is likely to go on. The deal—for Hamas to free 50 Israeli hostages in exchange for the four-day truce and the release of 150 Palestinians in Israeli prisons—was struck after weeks of negotiations through Qatari, Egyptian and American mediation.
It came amid mounting domestic pressure in Israel to bring the hostages home and growing international outrage over the destruction that Israel has wrought on Gaza. The accounts of the released hostages of the atrocities on October 7th, their abduction and their treatment are likely to dominate life in Israel in the coming days. They will also deepen the debate about whether Israel should prioritise saving further hostages, or put more weight on destroying Hamas’s capacity to terrorise Israelis, and in the process destroying more of Gaza.
The truce between Israel and Hamas came into play at 7am, just as the sun began to rise in Gaza. An alien silence—free of airstrikes and the buzz of drones—descended across the strip’s south. Palestinians, many of whom
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