The fourth Israeli hostage/Palestinian prisoner exchange since November 2023 took place in the Gaza Strip yesterday as Yarden Bibas, 35, Ofer Calderon, 54, and Keith Siegel, 65, were freed after 484 days in captivity.
Before they were released into the custody of the Red Cross, they were forced to stand on a stage under a banner inscribed with the inflammatory words “Nazi Zionism will not win.” This provocation was clearly an attempt by Hamas to score a cheap propaganda victory and to underscore its belief that it has not been defeated by Israel.
While Calderon and Siegel were reunited with their loved ones in Israel, Bibas returned in the knowledge that his family, if still alive, remains in Gaza. Information about Bibas’ wife, Shiri, 32, and their two red-headed sons, Ariel, 5, and Kfir, 2, the youngest hostages, is in short supply.
Shiri and her children were supposed to have been released in the earliest stages of the ceasefire agreements, which have led to the last four exchanges. But alas, they are nowhere to be seen, which is why yesterday’s handover was imbued with a bitter-sweet tinge.
The Israeli government has asked for their whereabouts, but to no avail, leading to speculation that they may be dead.
Israel’s military spokesman, Daniel Hagari, gingerly alluded to that possibility last week when he admitted he was “gravely concerned” about their fate.
Last year, Hamas claimed that Shiri and her sons had been killed in an Israeli air strike, but Israel has yet to confirm this. It would be doubly tragic if Hamas’ disclosure turns out to be true, but it would not be surprising. Several hostages already have been killed accidentally by Israel.
Shiri and her sons were kidnapped on October 7, 2023 when Hamas terrorists invaded their home on Kibbutz Nir Oz, a few kilometers away from Gaza. They murdered her parents, Margit Shnaider Silberman and Yosi Silberman, as well as her dog.
Nir Oz, which was established in 1956, was particularly hit hard on that horrific day, when Hamas slaughtered roughly 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 Israelis and foreigners in an unprecedented orgy of mayhem, murder, sexual assault and looting.
Approximately one-quarter of its 400 residents were killed or abducted. Two Hamas video clips recovered by Israel show the kidnapping of the Bibas family in graphic fashion. The first one pans on a horrified woman clutching her toddlers to her bosom. Another shows Yarden Bibas, his head covered in blood, being driven separately away on a motorcycle.
Their distraught faces are emblematic of the national trauma Israel has endured since October 7. Hostage families and their supporters, having adopted Shiri and her sons as the symbols of October 7, have worn orange shirts and carried orange balloons in their honor and in support of their release.
At this juncture, no one knows when they will be repatriated, whether alive or dead. Only 13 of the 33 hostages under the first phase of the three-part ceasefire deal have been released so far.
The remainder of the hostages are supposed to be set free, along with more Palestinian prisoners, during the second phase, which requires an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, a prospect that the Israeli government may yet reject.
Negotiations on the next stage are scheduled to get under way no later than February 3, a day before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump are due to meet in the White House.
The Trump administration is apparently working on the assumption that the rest of the six-week truce should be implemented so that Gaza can be stabilized and gradually rebuilt and the U.S. can broker a historic normalization accord between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Netanyahu, however, may not be interested in implementing phase two until he achieves two of his major war aims — the destruction of Hamas’ military and governing capabilities. These objectives may be beyond his reach unless he occupies parts of Gaza and restarts the war in an attempt to finish off Hamas.
These are the goals that some members of his cabinet, especially Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich of the Religious Zionist Party, are demanding as the price for staying in Netanyahu’s coalition government.
If Netanyahu defers to Smotrich and chooses to continue the war, the remaining hostages, including Shiri and her sons, will remain in Gaza, intensifying Israel’s ordeal and the Bibas family tragedy.