Hamas releases three hostages in exchange for 183 Palestinians by Israel

Monitoring Desk GAZA: Palestinian group Hamas handed over three Israeli hostages on Saturday, while Israel released 183 Palestinians in the latest stage of a ceasefire aimed at ending the 15-month war in Gaza. Ohad Ben Ami and Eli Sharabi, both taken hostage from Kibbutz Be’eri during the cross-border Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023, and Or Levy, abducted that day from the Nova music festival, were led onto a Hamas podium by gunmen. In another show of force by Hamas, which has paraded fighters during previous releases, dozens of its militants deployed in central Gaza as it handed hostages over to the International Committee of the Red Cross. The hostages were then driven in ICRC cars to Israeli forces and into Israel, where they were reunited in smiles and tears with family members and flown to hospitals. “We missed you so much,” the mother of Or Levy, Geula, said as she hugged her son. In exchange for the hostages’ release, Israel freed 183 Palestinian prisoners. Cheering crowds greeted the buses as they arrived in Gaza, embracing the freed detainees as they disembarked, some of them weeping with joy and tearing prison-issued bracelets off their wrists. Among those freed in Ramallah, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, was Eyad Abu Shkaidem, sentenced to 18 life terms in Israel for masterminding suicide attacks in revenge for Israel’s 2004 assassinations of Hamas leaders. “Today, I am reborn,” Shkaidem told reporters upon arrival in Ramallah, as the crowd cheered. The Palestinian Red Crescent medical service said six of the 42 released in the West Bank were in poor health and were taken to hospitals. Some prisoners complained of ill-treatment. “The occupation humiliated us for over a year,” said Shkaidem. Some hostages face a painful return. The exchange is the latest in a series of swaps that have so far returned 16 Israeli and five Thai hostages and released 583 Palestinian prisoners and detainees. The first 42-day phase of the ceasefire mediated by Washington, Cairo and Doha, has largely held since it took effect on January 19. But fears the deal might collapse before all the remaining 76 hostages are free have grown since U.S. President Donald Trump’s surprise call for Palestinians to be moved from Gaza and for the enclave to be handed to the United States and developed into the “Riviera of the Middle East”. Arab states and Palestinian groups have rejected Trump’s proposal, which critics said would amount to ethnic cleansing. Hamas said on Saturday that its armed display at the hostage handover demonstrated it could not be excluded from post-war Gaza arrangements.