The Israeli authorities are making preparations to welcome home dozens of hostages held incommunicado by Hamas for over a year in Gaza, without knowing whether they will return starved, traumatized or dead.
Thirty-three hostages are supposed to be freed in the first phase of the Gaza cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas, in the first such major release since a weeklong cease-fire seven weeks into the war. Some families have caught glimpses of their loved ones in Hamas-directed hostage videos. But it is far from clear in what condition the captives will return.
At Israeli hospitals, health officials have been preparing isolated areas where the hostages can begin recuperating in privacy. Israel’s Health Ministry has drafted an extensive protocol for their psychological and physical treatment. There are particular concerns that they may be severely malnourished.
“The ones who were freed back then were already poorly nourished,” Hagar Mizrahi, a senior Israeli health ministry official, said of the hostages freed during the 2023 truce. “Imagine their situation now, after an additional 400 days. We are extremely worried about this.”
After Hamas led the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, killing about 1,200 people and capturing about 250 others, about 105 Israeli and foreign hostages were freed in the weeklong truce in November that year. A few were later released in Israeli military operations, and Israeli soldiers recovered the bodies of dozens of others.
But around 98 hostages remained in Gaza, dozens of whom presumed dead by the Israeli authorities.
Of the women, older men and other hostages returning under the first phase of this cease-fire deal, many are believed to have been held in the militant group’s warren of tunnels in Gaza, conditions likely to leave physical and psychological scars.
Health officials have been poring over every piece of intelligence — including the hostage videos — in an effort to discern the hostages’ condition, Dr. Mizrahi said. A committee of officials that includes Dr. Mizrahi has determined that some were killed.
Israeli officials say the logistics of the release will be broadly similar to those during the previous cease-fire, when 105 hostages were released in exchange for 240 Palestinians jailed in Israel.
In that exchange, Hamas fighters handed over hostages — mostly women and children — to the International Committee of the Red Cross. The Red Cross’s workers ferried the captives from Gaza in a marked ambulance to Egypt before taking them to Israel.
At the border crossing, Israeli intelligence agents verified their identities. Around the same time, Israeli security officials released a specified group of Palestinian women and teenage prisoners.
This time, the Israeli authorities have established three reception points to receive the hostages along the Gaza border, according to an Israeli military official. Those will be staffed by Israeli soldiers, as well as doctors and psychologists, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in accordance with protocol.
From there, the hostages will be taken to the Israeli hospitals that have been preparing to care for them, the official said.
The 105 hostages released in November 2023 came home after roughly 50 days in captivity in Gaza. They arrived in a country that had fundamentally changed; some learned only then about friends and loved ones who had been killed in the Hamas-led attack.
At first, officials aimed to reintegrate returning hostages as quickly as possible, according to Dr. Mizrahi. Now, the health authorities recommend that the hostages being released remain in the hospital for at least four days, if not longer, she said.
In the meantime, the hostages’ family members — some of whom themselves survived captivity — can only wait.
“Last time, we saw the Red Cross transferring the hostages, and some of them were running to the relatives, hugging them,” said Einat Yehene, a clinical psychologist working with the Hostage Families Forum, an advocacy group. “It’s not going to be easy and similar this time, given the physical and the emotional conditions we expect.”
