FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
JERUSALEM – One minute of footage. Behind it is a floral blanket. Below, his arm wrapped in bandages, some traces of blood and a hand with a white latex glove tending him. “Hello. I’m Maya Shem, 21 years old and from Shoham. At the moment I am in Gaza. I returned from the Sderot area on Saturday morning. I was at the party. I have a bad wound on my arm. They took me to Gaza and operated here. They take care of me, they take care of me by giving me medicine. All is well. All I ask is to take me home to my parents and my brothers. Please get us out of here as quickly as possible.
It’s the first sign of life. The beginning of a negotiation. A video released by Hamas along with the organization’s epigraph. There is nothing but the face of a pale, tired, wounded girl. Torn from a carefree night in the Negev and thrown into a bombed-out ravine in the Gaza Strip. The kidnappers also attach the ransom demand verbally through one of their historic leaders, Khaled Mashal. A first installment. For Maya and the other semi-foreign hostages: the release of six thousand Palestinians, “men and women,” held in Israeli maximum security prisons.
Maya also has a French passport and in the last few days her parents were visited by the priest Catherine Colonna, who traveled from Paris. Only on Monday did they meet in Tel Aviv with French diplomats, who in turn met with Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen. Surprisingly, she is the first to emerge from the darkness of ten days: in this video there is “the shame that represents the taking of innocent hostages and the hateful dissemination of their images,” comments French President Emmanuel Macron.
“We are in a mix of feelings,” says Noa Scharf Ben David as she looks at the pictures of her granddaughter: happiness, optimism and hope. It breaks your heart. We just want to get her and all the hostages home. May they return safely.” Maya’s aunt saw the bandages: “Thank God they took care of her and didn’t touch her.” The most important thing for us is that she is healthy and happy. She is strong and brave. You see, she is a fighter. We believe in our hearts that he will return home. We know she feels it too.
Israeli army spokesmen are more skeptical: “In the video, Hamas is trying to portray itself as a humanitarian organization. Instead, it is a terrorist organization responsible for the killing and kidnapping of newborns, women, children and the elderly.”
Mashal says there are many more hostages than (199) declared by Israel: two hundred are in the hands of Hamas, he explains, but another fifty “other factions” have smaller (and even more extremist) groups such as Jihad and Hamas Salafist acronyms that do not always correspond to the strategies of the masters of Gaza. The Israeli services claim that even some willing Gazans joined the prison guards, “outsiders” who left the Gaza Strip on October 7 and helped arrest everyone they found.
How many foreign hostages are there, or at least those with dual passports like Maya? “They are our guests,” says simply Abu Obaida, spokesman for Hamas’ military wing, who also lives in Qatar and stays away from his people’s martyrdom. “We will release all foreigners,” Mashal specifies. When? No date, but probably soon: Some Israeli newspapers also associate this possibility with the sudden arrival of American President Joe Biden in Jerusalem on Wednesday. Certainly, and also for this reason, the White House will ask Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu to postpone the land offensive for a few days: there is ongoing mediation by Qatar, Turkey and other countries that is trying to attract both Israel and Hamas to persuade them to sign an agreement for a secret exchange of foreign hostages for Palestinian prisoners. This is not easy: on the one hand, Bibi could have a freer hand to intervene militarily, but in doing so he would make his emergency less “international”; On the other hand, Gaza’s rulers would feel less pressure from the world, but it is not certain that they will be able to convince the hawks of Jihad and Al-Qassam Brigades.
“We have to differentiate the prisoners between soldiers, foreigners and Israeli civilians,” says Mashal.
There would be some discussion among the prison guards and something is also clear from their public statements. Negotiation management is complex. Mashal has officially asked for the support of Hezbollah: the anger within Hamas is great, and it is the leader who thanks “his co-religionists for their efforts” and therefore clearly states that the support of the Lebanese Shiites – they are hesitant to go into the to intervene in the crisis – has so far been “inadequate”.
“We will release the foreigners as soon as the circumstances allow it,” emphasizes Abu Obaida, slightly correcting Mashal’s rather possible words. The Mossad and the Shin Bet are certain: he, Abu Obaida, is the one who is managing the hostages. He divided them into three groups: 1) those with double passports; 2) women, the elderly and children; 3) Soldiers, including “senior officers” of the Israel Defense Forces. How are they treated? “They eat exactly what we eat.”