KEY POINTS
- Hamas releases three Israeli hostages, while Israel frees 369 Palestinian prisoners.
- Both Hamas and Israel accuse each other of truce deal violations.
- Talks on a second phase are expected next week.
- Trump’s proposal of relocating Gaza’s population, sparks strong rejection from Arab nations.
- Israel’s military campaign has killed over 48,000 Palestinians in Gaza since October 7.
KHAN YOUNIS, Palestine: Hamas released three Israeli hostages to the Red Cross on Saturday, while Israel freed 369 Palestinian prisoners in the latest exchange under an ongoing Gaza truce deal.
The released three hostages — Yair Horn, 46, a dual citizen of Israel and Argentina; American-Israeli Sagui Dekel Chen, 36; and Russian-Israeli Alexander (Sasha) Troufanov, 29 — called for the completion of further hostage exchanges under the ceasefire deal.
Later, a busload of Palestinian prisoners departed Israel’s Ofer Prison and was greeted by a cheering crowd in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, AFP reported.
More buses full of prisoners pulled out of an Israeli prison in the Negev desert heading towards Gaza, according to AFP.
The two sides have carried out five swaps since the ceasefire began on January 19, freeing 21 hostages and over 730 Palestinian prisoners so far during the first phase of the truce.
Saturday’s swap, the sixth since the truce took effect, came after fears that the deal between Israel and Hamas was near collapse.
Fragile Gaza ceasefire deal
The war could resume if no agreement is reached on the more complicated second phase, which calls for the return of all remaining hostages captured in Hamas’ attack on October 7, 2023, and an indefinite extension of the truce.
Hamas had threatened to pause hostage releases over Israeli violations. Israel had threatened to resume the war if Hamas refused to release hostages, but on Friday both sides signalled the swap would go ahead as originally planned.
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had named the hostages as Israeli-American Sagui Dekel-Chen, Israeli-Russian Sasha Trupanov and Israeli-Argentine Yair Horn.
The Israeli military later confirmed all three were back in Israeli territory.
They had been held by Hamas since the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that sparked the war 16 months ago.
The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club advocacy group said Israel was to release 369 inmates in exchange, with 24 of them expected to be deported.
Almost all of the rest are “prisoners from the Gaza Strip who were arrested after October 7”, the group said.
Trump’s proposal to remove Palestinians from Gaza
US President Donald Trump’s controversial proposal to remove more than 2 million Palestinians from Gaza and settle them elsewhere in the region has cast even more doubt on the future of the ceasefire.
But Hamas said Thursday it would move ahead with the release of more hostages after talks with Egyptian and Qatari officials. The Palestinian group said the mediators had pledged to “remove all hurdles” to assure Israel would allow more tents, medical supplies and other essentials into Gaza.
ALSO READ: Trump Says Israel Will Hand Over Gaza to US After War Ends
A Hamas official on Friday said the group expected talks on a second phase of the ceasefire to begin early next week. Another source familiar with the talks offered a similar timeline, AFP reported.
The negotiations on the second phase are meant to lay out steps towards a more permanent end to the war.
United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose country is Israel’s top backer and one of the truce mediators, is due to arrive in Israel late Saturday ahead of expected talks with Netanyahu on the Gaza truce.
There were fears for Palestinians in Israeli custody, and the Red Crescent said four of the released Palestinians were transferred to a hospital.
Arab countries reject Trump’s plan
The ceasefire has been under massive strain since Trump proposed a takeover of the Gaza Strip under which the territory’s population would be moved to Egypt or Jordan.
For Palestinians, any forced displacement evokes memories of the “Nakba”, or catastrophe — the mass displacement of their ancestors during Israel’s creation in 1948.
The stage set up for the release on Saturday bore an illustrated poster appearing to depict the final moments of Hamas’s leader Yahya Sinwar, who Israeli forces killed in October. It showed the Al-Aqsa Mosque visible through a hole in the wall of a destroyed building along with the slogan: “No displacement except to Jerusalem”.
ALSO READ: Saudi Arabia Explores Alternatives to Trump’s Gaza Plan
Arab countries have come together to reject Trump’s plan, and Saudi Arabia will host the leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates on Thursday for a summit on the issue.
A joint statement from the heads of Christian churches in Jerusalem on Saturday also spoke out against any forced displacement, saying Gazans “who have lived for generations in the land of their ancestors, must not be forced into exile, stripped of… their right to remain in the land that forms the essence of their identity”.
Since October 7, 2023, the Israeli military campaign has killed at least 48,239 Palestinians, mostly women and children, in Gaza, according to the territory’s health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.
