Daily Tribune
Demonstrators gather for a protest by the relatives and supporters of Israeli hostages held captive in the Gaza Strip since the October 2023 attacks by Palestinian militants calling for a deal to secure their release outside the Israeli parliament (Knesset) headquarters in Jerusalem, marking the 500th day since their abduction.
Menahem Kahana/Agence France-Presse
Hamas paraded five Israeli hostages, some looking dazed and others elated, before cheering crowds at two meticulously recorded ceremonies in the Gaza Strip on Saturday.
In the first well-rehearsed morning ceremony in Rafah, Hamas fighters stood in an orderly fashion as they handed over hostages Tal Shoham and Avera Mengistu, who walked with apparent difficulty, to the Red Cross.
As in previous hostage releases, the men were given certificates in Hebrew to mark the end of their captivity before being helped into vehicles from the Red Cross, which acts as an intermediary, an AFP journalist reported.
Hamas fighters from the group's armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, wearing fatigues, balaclavas and green headbands, formed a cordon around the area to hold back the crowd of onlookers.
In a similarly choreographed ceremony later in Nuseirat, hostages Eliya Cohen, Omer Shem Tov and Omer Wenkert took the stage with shaved heads, smiling at a cheering crowd of hundreds.
The trio stood briefly on stage alongside Hamas fighters, waving at the crowd while a camera drone and a photographer captured the moment.
Shem Tov, who was abducted on 7 October from the Nova music festival in southern Israel, waved and blew kisses to the crowd before kissing two of his Hamas captors on their keffiyeh-wrapped heads.
Israel's military said later it had received a sixth Israeli hostage, Hisham al-Sayed, who was captured in Gaza a decade ago.
At both ceremonies, the Palestinian militants put on a display of strength.
In Rafah, some held Kalashnikov assault rifles and others flaunted hand-held rocket launchers, while Hamas's green flag flew around the square on buildings destroyed by war in the Palestinian territory.
Fidaa Awda, a resident of the southern city who attended the ceremony told AFP: "We say and continue to say that we are with the resistance, we are with the valiant Brigades, we are with the fighters."
On stage in southern Gaza, in front of a table draped in camouflage cloth, US-made assault rifles reportedly seized from Israeli soldiers in combat were displayed.
Behind the table, a slogan in Arabic, English and Hebrew read: "We are the flood. We are the extreme strength"
The slogan referenced Operation Al-Aqsa flood, the name used by Hamas and its allied Palestinian factions for their 7 October 2023, attack on Israel that sparked the Gaza war.
Other banners depicted fallen Hamas military commanders, including former armed wing chief Mohammed Deif, killed in an Israeli air strike in 2024.
A poster below the stage read "and the red freedom has a door, struck by every bloodied hand".
The sentence is a verse from a 1926 anti-colonial poem by Egyptian poet Ahmad Shawqi which slain Hamas leader and October 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar was seen reciting in a video taken during the Gaza war.
Some in the crowd of hundreds stood on large chunks of concrete from nearby buildings demolished by bombs, others on the upper floors of buildings whose walls appeared damaged by the war.
One man held a young boy clad in military fatigues and a Hamas headband as militants in arms paraded on the back of pickup trucks.
In a statement, Hamas praised the hostage releases and said that the Israeli public had two options.
"Either they receive their prisoners in coffins, as happened on Thursday, due to Netanyahu's arrogance, or they embrace their prisoners alive in commitment to the (Palestinian) resistance's conditions."
Sixty-two hostages taken during Hamas's 7 October attack are still being held in Gaza, including 35 who the Israeli military says are dead.
