FAMILY PHOTOBritish families of Israeli hostages taken by Hamas are reacting with cautious hope to the ceasefire deal that has been negotiated to end the 15 months of war in Gaza.
The 94 hostages still held by Hamas – 34 of whom are presumed dead – will be released under the deal in various stages, US President Joe Biden confirmed.
The daughter of 84-year-old hostage Oded Lifschitz told the BBC she hoped her father was still alive.
“Miracles do happen,” Sharone Lifschitz said from her east London home. The family of another hostage, Eli Sharabi, said they hoped he could be freed in the first phase of the deal, where 33 hostages will be exchanged for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.
“I’ve thought so hard about how I would feel at this moment but now it’s happening I don’t know what to feel,” said his brother-in-law Stephen Brisley.
Mr Brisley’s sister Lianne, a British citizen, and his teenage nieces Noiya and Yahel were murdered in Hamas’s attack in southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.
Israel in response launched a massive military offensive to destroy Hamas. Its campaign has killed more than 46,700 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry, displaced most of the 2.3 million population and caused widespread destruction.
After months of on-and-off negotiations, a ceasefire deal has been reached and is due to come into effect on Sunday, said Qatari and US meditators.
Mr Brisley, from Bridgend in south Wales, told the BBC he was cautious about his brother-in-law’s release as feared potential set-backs.
“This is the best news we have had up until now but you just never know with the parties involved and the weeks we will still have to wait is a bloody long time.”
Sharone Lifschitz told the BBC her father Oded had been held in captivity all this time while her mother Yocheved had been released in October 2023. The family does not know if her father is still alive.
“I know that the chances for my dad are very slim. He’s an elderly man, but miracles do happen,” she told the BBC.
“My mum did come back, and one way or another, we will know. We will know if he’s still with us, if we can look after him. We will know… My father didn’t deserve this.”
She celebrated the ceasefire deal as finally a “bit of sanity”.
But she warned there were “more graves to come and traumatised people to come back but we will look after them and make them see light again”.
“May this be the start of something better. It will be amazing to see the mothers hugging their children and the children hugging their fathers and we will know who we are grieving for.”
The family of Emily Damari, a British-Israeli citizen, is among those who have campaigned relentlessly for her release.
Her mother Mandy told the BBC last month she worried every second for her daughter, a Tottenham Hotspur fan who was taken from her home by Hamas gunmen.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Wednesday described the deal as “long-overdue news that the Israeli and Palestinian people have desperately been waiting for”.
“The hostages, who were brutally ripped from their homes on that day and held captive in unimaginable conditions ever since, can now finally return to their families,” he said.
“But we should also use this moment to pay tribute to those who won’t make it home – including the British people who were murdered by Hamas. We will continue to mourn and remember them.”
Foreign Secretary David Lammy called the ceasefire “a moment of hope after over a year of agony”.
“For the hostages and their loved ones, including British citizen Emily Damari, and Eli Sharabi, Oded Lifschitz and Avinatan Or, this has been an unbearable trauma.
“For the people of Gaza, so many of whom have lost lives, homes or loved ones, this has been a living nightmare.”
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