On a bleak late winter’s day, underneath leaden skies and occasional driving rain, this was the second all Israelis had been dreading.
The return of the lifeless.
It started, as all of the handovers up to now have begun, with a politically charged show by Hamas and different Palestinian armed teams concerned in holding Israeli hostages for over 500 days.
As soon as once more, there was a stage, flanked by big posters highlighting the catastrophic penalties of Israel’s navy marketing campaign in Gaza and the Palestinian dedication to remain put.
However as a substitute of haunted, generally emaciated, survivors, there have been 4 black coffins, every bearing {a photograph} and a reputation – Oded Lifschitz, Shiri Bibas and her two younger sons, Ariel and Kfir – accompanied by the picture of Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Missile casings bore the slogan: “They have been killed by US bombs”. Hamas has lengthy argued that every one 4 have been killed by Israeli air raids on Gaza, one thing which has not been verified.
As beforehand, Pink Cross officers have been readily available to supervise the method. In a uncommon public assertion on the matter, that they had urged Hamas to conduct the handover in a non-public, dignified vogue.
Their efforts had clearly been in useless, however they tried to display screen the coffins from public scrutiny, draping every one in a white sheet earlier than driving them away.
The watching crowd was smaller than standard, maybe due to the heavy rain.
After Thursday morning’s handover, at a navy ceremony on the sting of the Gaza Strip, the coffins carrying the hostages have been draped with Israeli flags and prayers provided by the military’s chief rabbi.
A convoy of automobiles then made its means north in the direction of the Abu Kabir forensic institute, in Jaffa, the place formal identification of the our bodies is going down.
Alongside the route, small teams of Israelis stood silently within the rain, carrying Israeli flags and yellow banners – the color related to the hostages and their supporters.
In Karmei Gat, the place displaced members of kibbutz Nir Oz live, ready to go residence, the vigil was notably sombre.
All 4 of Thursday’s launched hostages have been seized from Nir Oz on 7 October 2023.
Tel Aviv’s Hostages Sq. was a examine in grief, with folks crying or sitting on the bottom, heads in palms.
The faces of the red-headed Bibas boys – Ariel and Kfir – are plastered on partitions, street indicators and in home windows up and down the nation. Fearing the worst, Israelis have however clung to the hope that the brothers may need survived, together with their mom, Shiri.
“We have been devastated by the information,” Orly Marron mentioned, exterior Abu Kabir.
“I’ve red-headed grandchildren and seeing the images is basically very heartbreaking.”
Oded Lifschitz’s son, Yizhar, in the meantime informed Israel Radio that he had at all times feared for his father’s well being, since his violent abduction in October 2023.
Oded was 84 years previous on the time. He and his spouse, Yocheved, have been each taken to Khan Younis in Gaza, the place they have been separated, by no means to see one another once more.
Yocheved was launched by Hamas two weeks after the assault.
“We have to shut this wound and transfer ahead,” Yizhar mentioned, including that his father, a famous journalist and peace activist, had lengthy had a imaginative and prescient about easy methods to resolve the conflicts of the Center East.
“It is unhappy that we went via this entire cycle and did not resolve it,” Yizhar mentioned. “We left it as one thing simmering, and look the place we at the moment are.”
In the meantime, again in Gaza, some Palestinians expressed their anger that Israeli our bodies had been handed over, whereas an unknown variety of Palestinians killed in Israel’s navy marketing campaign stay buried within the apocalyptic wreckage of the Gaza Strip.
As well as, as many as 665 our bodies are being held by Israel in numbered cemeteries, in response to a Palestinian protest group, The Nationwide Marketing campaign to Recuperate the Our bodies of the Martyrs. It says some have been held for many years.
“I do not like this settlement in any respect,” Ikram Abu Salout mentioned in Khan Younis. “They did not take away the rubble and we do not even know the place our youngsters and households are.”
As she was talking, bulldozers flying Egyptian flags have been lastly arriving in northern Gaza. Israel allowed the gear to enter, in trade for Thursday’s handover and the discharge of six extra residing hostages this coming Saturday.
