An 8-year-old soccer fan who enjoys playing video games. Young adult siblings dancing at a music festival in the desert. A 67-year-old agricultural expert and her relatives enjoy a family reunion.
These are some of the 105 people released by Hamas during a temporary ceasefire with Israel that began on November 24 and ended in early December.
Under the terms of the agreement, reached after weeks of tense negotiations, Israel released three detained Palestinians for every Israeli hostage allowed to leave Gaza. As part of this framework program, 80 Israelis, some of whom have dual citizenship, were released from captivity. By the end of the lull in fighting, 240 Palestinians had been released from Israeli prisons, mostly women and minors, and many of them had been imprisoned but never charged.
In addition, a number of foreign nationals – 23 Thai citizens, a Filipino and an Israeli-Russian dual citizen – were released under separate negotiations outside the ceasefire.
The temporary agreement, which came with a surge in urgently needed humanitarian aid in the besieged enclave, marked the first major diplomatic breakthrough in the conflict.
Click on an image to learn more about each hostage who has returned from Gaza so far. This page will be updated as more hostages are released.
Editor’s note: Several Israeli hostages who were released before the temporary ceasefire are not included in this story.
Select a person to learn more.