“Hello, my name is Yahya Sinouar. You are better protected here than anywhere else. “Nothing will happen to you,” the leader of Hamas in Gaza said to Israeli hostages in the Hebrew he learned in prison, according to testimony on Israel’s Channel 12 television. The short-lived meeting is said to have taken place on the same day of the attack in a tunnel not far from Khan Younès, a town in southern Gaza, where residents of Kibbutz Nir Oz had been taken, including the witness to the scene.
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According to initial reports of hostages released as part of the exchange negotiated between Israel and Hamas, this is the only time Yahya Sinouar has appeared. If these testimonies are shared with relatives or the media, they are necessarily limited, if only because many other hostages remain held captive in the Palestinian enclave.
Although detention conditions were sometimes difficult, it appears that the hostages were not ill-treated. The Munders, who were released on the first day of the exchange, were not given regular food and slept on benches but were not tortured, Merav Raviv, one of their relatives, told Ynet newspaper. Emily Hand from Kibbutz Beeri, who was 9 years old in captivity, was emaciated. According to her father, Thomas Hand, who spoke to CNN, she always ate breakfast, but other meals were more random. She was never beaten, she said, but she had to avoid making noise. We let them draw and play cards.
Eitan Yahalomi’s grandmother told Haaretz newspaper that her 12-year-old grandson, a French-Israeli from Nir Oz, spent the first 16 days of his captivity in solitary confinement. He was then reportedly taken out of his kibbutz along with other hostages. “Each child receives nutritional supplementation depending on the assessment,” Ronit Lubetzky, director of pediatrics at Ichilov Hospital, told the press. The children would be “accompanied by social workers, psychologists and psychiatrists – for those who need them – to enable them to return to normal everyday life.”
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A doctor collected the testimony of an elderly woman for Ynet. She says she was not beaten, but lacked medication and food. “Their diet consisted mainly of rice, hummus and canned beans, sometimes with salty cheese and pita, but nothing more. No fruit, vegetables or eggs,” the doctor reported. The hostage is said to have lost 12 kilos. Water, however, was served at will – although it was lacking for Gazans suffering from the violent Israeli onslaught that has so far killed 15,000 people, according to Palestinian authorities.
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