Early this Friday, the Israeli army rescued the bodies of three other Hamas hostages, the Israeli Hanan Yablonka, the Brazilian-Israeli Michel Nisenbaum and the Mexican-French Orion Hernandez, in Jabaliya, in the north of the Gaza Strip. “According to verified intelligence information in our possession, the hostages were killed during the October 7 massacre and kidnapped at the Mefalsim intersection towards Gaza by Hamas terrorists,” the army said in a statement.
The rescue of the bodies was carried out in a joint operation between the army and the Shin Bet security agency, based on “precise intelligence obtained and analyzed in recent days” by the department created specifically to find the hostages. “At the beginning of the operation, intense fighting took place in the area,” said the army, which last week also rescued four hostage bodies in Jabaliya.
The bodies have already been identified at the Israel National Forensic Institute and the Israeli Police, and their respective families have been notified. “The sad return of Michel, Hanan and Orion is another heartbreak for the families of the hostages, who share the pain, sadness and endless worry. His return for the burial provides important closure for family members. “Efforts must be made to bring all the murdered hostages back to Israel,” said the Forum of Families of Hostages and Missing Persons.
The Forum once again called on the government of Beniamín Netanyahu to “re-send the negotiating teams with the clear demand to reach an agreement that would allow all the hostages to be quickly returned to their homes: the living for their rehabilitation and the murdered for their rehabilitation.” burial”.
Netanyahu sent a message of condolences to the families “with deep pain” and praised the work of the IDF brigade of the army, which “with great bravery in enemy territory” was able to rescue them and return them to their families for burial.
“We have the national and moral duty to do everything possible to return our kidnapped people – lives and spaces – and that is what we are doing,” said the prime minister, who this week authorized the resumption of negotiations for a peace agreement. exchange of hostages for prisoners, which has been stalled for months.
Michel Nisenbaum, 59, lived in the city of Sderot and was a Brazilian-Israeli who emigrated to Israel at the age of 13, father of two daughters and grandfather of six, the youngest of whom he did not have the opportunity to meet.
Hanan Yablonka, a 42-year-old father of two, lived in Tel Aviv and was kidnapped at the Nova music festival, as was the Mexican-French Oryon Hernández, 30, who attended with his partner Shani Louk – the German whose video of him, apparently dead, in a Hamas van entering Gaza on October 7 went viral and whose body was found in Jabaliya last week – and his friend Keshet Casarotti, both murdered by Hamas that day .
Of the 253 kidnapped on October 7, 121 captives remain in the enclave, about 40 of them dead according to Israel – more than 70 according to Hamas -; while there have been four other hostages for years, two of them dead.
Since the war began, Israel and Hamas only reached a one-week truce agreement in late November, which allowed the release of 105 hostages in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners. Additionally, four hostages were released by Hamas in October; three rescued by the army – two of them in February in a successful operation in Rafah; while the bodies of 20 hostages have been recovered, three of whom Israeli troops mistakenly killed in December.
