Hostages Romi Gonen, Emily Damari, Doron Steinbrecher return to Israel after 471 days
Israel at warIDF: 'They're in our hands. They're coming home'

Hostages Romi Gonen, Emily Damari, Doron Steinbrecher return to Israel after 471 days

Masked Hamas gunmen hand women over to Red Cross in midst of raucous crowds in Gaza City; women meet their mothers at IDF facility near Gaza, before transfer to hospital

From left: Romi Gonen, Emily Damari and Doron Steinbrecher (Courtesy)
From left: Romi Gonen, Emily Damari and Doron Steinbrecher (Courtesy)

For the first time since November 2023, three hostages taken during the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel were released by Hamas on Sunday under a ceasefire deal, returning to Israel after 471 days in captivity in the Gaza Strip.

The first three hostages freed under the deal were civilians Romi Gonen, 24, Emily Damari, 28, and Doron Steinbrecher, 31. Gonen was abducted from the Supernova music festival, while Damari and Steinbrecher were taken from their homes in Kibbutz Kfar Aza.

On Sunday evening masked Hamas gunmen handed the three women to the Red Cross at Saraya Square in central Gaza City, where large rowdy crowds gathered, waving flags of the Palestinian terror group and holding cellphones in the air to film the event.

Looking thin and frightened, the hostages disembarked from a Hamas military vehicle, surrounded by armed men and cameras, and quickly boarded the Red Cross vehicles.

The three women were said to be in relatively good physical condition.

Around half an hour later, the Red Cross handed the hostages over to elite Israeli troops and Shin Bet agents inside Gaza.

They were then transferred to Israel to a complex set up by the IDF near the Gaza border at Re’im Base. There they met their mothers for the first time in over 15 months.

The women were set to meet with IDF representatives, doctors, psychologists and mental health officers, and receive initial treatment.

The IDF released footage of the moment Gonen, Damari, and Steinbrecher crossed the border from the Gaza Strip back into Israel, escorted by special forces.

The IDF also published footage of the mothers of the three former hostages at the facility near the border watching their daughters return to Israel, along with clips of the families celebrating during the moments when they were handed over to troops in the Gaza Strip.

From the IDF facility, they were to be escorted by the military to the Safra Children’s Hospital at Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer, Ramat Gan, where they were to reunite with the rest of their families.

The hospital said they would be checked by a special medical staff and looked after by support personnel and given fresh new clothes, toiletries, beauty care, and specially-prepared meals.

The children’s hospital was chosen because it offers quiet accommodation and privacy, though crowds of well-wishers gathered outside on Sunday evening.

The three were released hours after a long-elusive ceasefire went into effect Sunday morning, after a brief delay.

Roughly 2,000 people crowded into the so-called Hostages Square in Tel Aviv on Sunday afternoon to watch as the first images of the returning hostages were broadcast.

Israel’s confirmation that the three were in Israeli hands was met with several waves of applause.

“They are in our hands. They are coming home,” IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said in a press conference.

A strand of yellow balloons representing solidarity with the hostages was released into the air, where it curled into the shape of the ubiquitous yellow ribbon.

The hostage-ceasefire deal caps a protracted international effort to get both Hamas and Israel to agree to an accord to halt the war sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack and free the rest of the hostages. The first phase of the three-phase accord provides for a total of 33 captives to be released over 42 days in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners.

Several tense hours preceded the start of the ceasefire, with Hamas twice missing deadlines to hand over the list of hostages to be freed Sunday, and Israel refusing to halt its fire until the terror group produced the names, raising concerns of the deal faltering before even entering into effect.

The three released hostages

Gonen was kidnapped from the Nova music festival as she tried to escape the terrorist onslaught.

A British-Israeli dual citizen, Damari was taken hostage on October 7 by Hamas terrorists who attacked Kibbutz Kfar Aza, killing, assaulting and abducting dozens to Gaza.

“It would be the most wonderful feeling in the world if she comes back, the most wonderful feeling. But I won’t believe it until I see and feel it for myself,” her mother Mandy said in a statement released on behalf of her family earlier in the day.

Steinbrecher, a veterinary nurse, was also kidnapped from Kfar Aza.

In exchange for all 33 hostages to be freed in the 42-day first phase of the deal, Israel will, by the end of phase one, hand over up to 1,904 Palestinian prisoners and detainees, including several serving multiple life sentences for deadly terror attacks and murders.

The new releases under the accord are scheduled for Saturday, when four more women hostages are to be freed. All 33 hostages to be freed in the first phase of the deal are so-called humanitarian cases — women, children, men over 50, and ill or injured men. Most but not all of the 33 are believed to be alive.

Of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas during the October 7, 2023, invasion and massacre in southern Israel, 91 are now believed to remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 34 confirmed dead by the IDF.

Hamas released 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November, and four hostages were released before that. Eight hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 40 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the Israeli military as they tried to escape their captors.

Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the body of an IDF soldier who was killed in 2014. The body of another IDF soldier, also killed in 2014, was recently recovered from Gaza in a clandestine Israeli military operation. PJC

Agencies, Noam Lehmann and Shoshanna Solomon contributed to this report.

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