The pact between Israel and Hamas that began to be applied this Friday contemplates the release of 50 hostages in Gaza and the release of 150 Palestinian prisoners. It is almost all that each other’s families know, which leaves many—all those who have not seen their relatives released in the first round of the exchange—in anguish and uncertainty. First, because the releases are in phases, day by day, as long as a breach does not ruin the truce. And, second, because there are more families and children affected than those established in the agreement. Israel has released a list of 300 potential releaseees, but they will only be released if the four-day agreement is concluded and extended by as many. As for the Israeli families, only 13 will be able to hug their loved ones again this afternoon (in addition to those close to the 10 Thais and the freed Filipino citizen). The rest can only wait.
Paola Frishta: “This is very hard. “I was very hopeful that my sister and the girls would come out.”
Paola Frishta, 49 years old, had been trying for a month and a half, without much success, to “be calm,” despite the fact that her sister Karina Engelbert; Her brother-in-law, Ronen Engel, and two of her nieces, Mika, 18, and Yuval, 11, are kidnapped in Gaza. The announcement on Wednesday of an exchange of women and minors, in which his sister and nieces potentially enter, and the subsequent delay to Friday of the start of its application, has immersed him in a mixture of “hope” and “nervousness” that prevents you from sleeping a wink. She is not among the first 13 released this Friday, so she will have to deal day by day with the uncertainty and fear that the truce will blow up at any moment. Or that it is not extended after the four agreed days and they are not among the fifty that are contemplated. Ronen will not be safe because he is an adult male and the pact only includes women and minors.
“I can’t even manage myself since the announcement [del pacto]. I spend all day at home, locked up like a lion in a cage. I try to stay busy, talk to people. Nothing stops me from being worried right now, neither day nor night. I was very hopeful that maybe [Karina] “I was going to go out with the girls, but this is very hard.” Frishta says by phone from Klahim, the cooperative agricultural community about 12 kilometers from Gaza where she lives and where the Hamas gunmen did not arrive on October 7 . Yes, they did it to Kibbutz Nir Oz, the scene of a massacre and dozens of kidnappings and where her sister locked herself with her family in the so-called safe room while she heard gunshots in the background. “I didn’t want to call her a lot so that the phone wouldn’t ring and they would discover her, but one of the times she told me that she was with the girls and she was afraid. I asked him not to go out. Suddenly, she told me: ‘I cut you off, they are inside the house.’ Since then I haven’t heard anything about them.”
The Army later confirmed that the four are kidnapped in Gaza, where the GPS of their mobile phone marks their location. He believes that her sister does not know that her husband is also in danger, because he left the house armed earlier. He is worried about her sister’s health: she had just overcome cancer and she was still recovering the hair she lost during chemotherapy. On October 30, she had to have passed her one-year checkup. “Karina would have to be going to the hospital for a check-up every month and in constant contact with the doctors to follow the evolution,” she laments.
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Paola, with dual Argentine-Israeli nationality, is also plagued by questions: will the three of them be together or separate? How will they be in health? To deal with them, she clings to one thought: “Karina is strong. They’re going to be fine. When they come back, we will hug them and take care of them.”
Amer Abu Mayaleh: “The agreement is a joy, but these are difficult days because we do not know if my cousin will be released from prison or not”
Amer Abu Mayaleh, 21, closes the doors and blinds to talk about his cousin Omar, 15 and one of the 300 on the list of potential released Palestinian prisoners. It’s not because of fear. Quite the opposite: in Palestine, prisoners are seen as heroes of the cause against Israel – whether for blood crimes or for mourning the dead of Gaza in a Facebook post -, in addition to the fact that few family clans do not have or have not had someone behind bars. It’s a precaution. Four Israeli police officers, hooded and armed with rifles, walk up the street that leads to their humble house in Wadi Qadum, in the occupied part of Jerusalem and on the slopes of the Mount of Olives where tourists do not reach. “It’s something normal here,” he says this Thursday night, before which he foresees hours of sleeplessness until he finds out if his cousin is released from prison.
The list has 300 names because they could all end up being released from prison if the agreement is extended. But the pact right now only marks 150 releases in four days (the first 39 have already been released this Friday). “On the one hand, it is a joy, because it means that it may come out. It’s on the list. But on the other hand, these days are difficult because we don’t know if he will do it or not. And there are many rumors, which are confusing. Officially, no one has told us if he is going out or not, so we have not prepared anything to celebrate in private because we do not know,” he says in the kitchen-living room of his house. He says “in private” because the Israeli police will prevent the celebrations. “If we do something, they put him back in jail.” Omar has served eight months of a four-year sentence. In the list released by the Ministry of Justice he appears accused mainly of supporting terrorism, disturbing public order and damage to property.
Amer, who says he has been interrogated 13 times, but never imprisoned, knows that it is time to be patient. “We have waited fifteen hours for other relatives. Not in an exchange, but because he finished his sentence.” And if, in the end, he doesn’t come out, resign yourself. “Look, here, in this country [Palestina], we are used to it. We know that one or the other will end up in jail.”
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