Romi Gonen, Emily Damari and Doron Steinbrecher. These are the names of the first three hostages to be freed on Sunday by Hamas after a ceasefire deal with Israel nearly fell through when Hamas failed to provide the list as agreed.
The three female hostages are the first of 33 set to be freed over the next six weeks as part of a 42-day agreement under which Israel will release over 1,900 terrorist prisoners, including several who have murdered Israeli civilians.
It is unclear whether the three are alive or dead, though they are presumed to be alive, since the agreement is said to prioritize the living hostages. They will have endured 471 days of captivity after the October 7, 2023, terror attack.
Gonen, 24, was abducted from the Nova music festival after being shot in the arm while trying to escape in a car, as her terrified mother listened on the phone. Damari, 28, a dual British-Israeli citizen, was abducted from her home in Kibbutz Kfar Aza and had also been shot and injured by shrapnel. Steinbrecher, 31, was also abducted from Kfar Aza.
The details of their release — including when they would be released, and what their condition is — are unknown.
In a statement after the ceasefire went into effect at 11:15 a.m. local time — nearly three hours later than agreed — Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi said: “[W]e would not have reached an agreement under these terms if Hamas had not been in such a dificult situation … Right now, this is our position of strength.”
There will still be 65 hostages left in Gaza after the six-week “first phase” of the deal is concluded. It is unclear how many of those hostages are still alive, though some number are presumed to have survived captivity thus far.
Separately, on Saturday, the IDF retrieved the body of one of the deceased hostages — Staff Sgt. Oron Shaul, who died in battle in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge, a war started by Hamas in 2014 that ended in a tense ceasefire.
President-elect Donald Trump welcomed the news of the hostage deal on the eve of his Inauguration: “Hostages starting to come out today! Three wonderful young women will be first,” he wrote Sunday morning on Truth Social.
Israeli government spokesman David Mencer said that Hamas’s evasions, first in releasing the names of the hostages, and then the hostages themselves, was in keeping with their behavior as a jihadist organization. “We know precisely whom we are dealing with,” he told journalists.
He said that both President Joe Biden and President-elect Donald Trump had agreed that Israel could attack Hamas if the deal fell through, and that the ceasefire was temporary.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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