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TEL AVIV – Ayelet Samerano, whose 21-year-old son Jonathan was kidnapped by Hamas on October 7, watched on television Friday evening as Israel’s ground and air attacks on Gaza increased.
The expanded military operation with ground troops surprised them. Israeli officials had not warned the families of more than 200 hostages held by Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that controls Gaza, that the military was tightening its siege, despite fears that the prisoners would be harmed by the government’s offensive could be endangered.
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Samerano harbored two deep desires: one for the release of her son and one for the decimation of the group that kidnapped him as he fled a music festival in southern Israel.
“I am not afraid of what my government is doing in Gaza,” she said. “I’m afraid of what Hamas can do to Israel.”
Samerano told herself that her son would be safe during the Israeli offensive — that, in her mind, Hamas was keeping the hostages underground to protect them. “For Hamas,” she said, “the hostages are power.”
But not all of the hostages’ families – spanning Israel’s political spectrum – were so confident that their relatives would be protected in an Israeli ground invasion or escalating bombing campaign. Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said on Friday that the confirmed number of hostages was 229.
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“Maybe they kept her alive until now,” said Imbal Zach, 38, the cousin of Tal Shoham, who was taken hostage with his wife and two children, 3 and 8, after Hamas militants stormed the Beeri kibbutz had attacked. Zach now fears that Hamas’s calculations regarding the prisoners may change due to Israeli ground operations and that they may have “done something to them.”
Shoham’s family, like the others, had been assigned a government representative who visited regularly. But the families’ questions about the government’s plans to release the prisoners were almost never answered at these meetings. So far, Hamas has released four hostages.
And now a new question arose: How would the Israeli government protect the hostages as it carried out its most aggressive bombing campaign on Gaza in more than a decade?
Yonatan Shamriz, whose brother Alon was kidnapped from Kibbutz Kfar Azza, said he stopped believing in the possibility of Israel coexisting with the Hamas-run Gaza Strip on October 7. He found himself longing for a military response. But the timing is important, he said: A military operation on site should only begin after the hostages have been released.
“Then Gaza should be razed to the ground,” he said.
See how the Israeli siege has plunged Gaza into darkness and isolation
According to the Israeli government, more than 1,400 people were killed in the October 7 attacks. Gaza’s Health Ministry said on Saturday that more than 7,700 people were killed in Israel’s military response. It is a campaign that has devastated entire neighborhoods, displaced more than a million people, cut off Gaza from internet and mobile networks and pushed the territory’s health system to the brink of collapse.
The families of Israeli hostages have formed a group called the Hostages and Missing Families Forum. They communicate constantly through a WhatsApp group that was active throughout Friday night’s military operation in Gaza. Families debated the risks of a ground invasion as it intensified.
“We have about 200 different opinions,” said Danny Elgarat, 63, whose brother Itzik was kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz.
The group released a statement on Saturday expressing concern about the impact of the military operation on the hostages.
“That night was the most terrible night of all. “It was a long and sleepless night against the background of the major IDF operation in the Gaza Strip and the absolute uncertainty about the fate of the hostages held there, who were also exposed to the heavy bombing,” the statement said, referring to Israel Defense Forces or IDF.
On Saturday, more than a dozen families of hostages gathered in central Tel Aviv, demanding a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Some family members held signs reading “Prisoner of War Exchange Now” and “At Any Cost.”
Elgarat held a sign with photos of his brother and the message: “Bring him home now.”
Nevertheless, he firmly believed in a decisive military response in Gaza. When he saw the news of the operation on Friday evening, he said: “I was happy.”
“If we don’t defeat Hamas, Israel will be defeated,” he said.
Later Saturday, the group of hostage families issued another statement: They planned to remain at the gate of a government building in Tel Aviv until Netanyahu and Gallant agreed to meet with them.
“We expect the Prime Minister and the Defense Minister to meet with us today, look us in the eye and give a clear answer to the question,” the statement said. “Does the escalation of military activity in Gaza endanger the well-being of the 229 hostages?”