An artistic installation that recreates a Hamas tunnel has been installed in what is now known as Hostage Square in Tel Aviv, so that Israelis can experience how the 136 kidnapped people who remain held in the Gaza Strip for almost 100 days experience their captivity. .
The initiative tries to simulate the “terrible conditions” that the hostages face in the tunnels where they are hidden, with limited space and lack of natural light, said the Forum of Relatives of Hostages and Missing Persons.
The relatives of the 136 hostages – 25 of them are estimated to have died – were the first to walk through the facility, which was later opened to the general public, who immediately formed a long line to show solidarity with the kidnapped people.
The inauguration of the fictitious tunnel, inside which the families wrote the names of their loved ones, is the starting signal for a whole day of events to demand the return of all the hostages from the Israeli Government.
Today at 8 p.m. (18 GMT) a massive demonstration will begin in that square in Tel Aviv that will last for 24 hours, until 8 p.m. tomorrow, when 100 days of war and captivity of the kidnapped people who are still in Gaza will be completed. , after 110 were released.
“Now I’m shaking, I can barely breathe, and I’ve only been in there for five minutes. I just wanted to run out of there. And I have the option to get out, but they don’t have it. They’ve been sitting in the dark in this terrible place for 100 days now.” “said Ella Ben Amin, daughter of Ohad Ben Amin, who was kidnapped by Hamas on October 7.
His mother, also a hostage, was freed during the week of truce that the parties reached in November, when 105 captives, all women and children, were handed over from the almost 250 that Hamas kidnapped that day during its brutal attack on Israeli soil, which left also more than 1,200 dead.
“I can’t describe the feeling. It must feel very alone,” said Ella, accompanied by her uncle and with a poster of her father, 55 years old.
Eyal Munder, nephew of Avraham Munder, 78, also went through the tunnel, a brief experience he described as “horrible”, something even more serious in the Gaza tunnels, “without fresh air, without medicine, without food and without sight.” sunlight, sleeping on the ground.”
“Imagine the impact on mental health, assuming that my uncle was healthy and young, which is not the case, these are already unbearable conditions with damage to the psychological state,” he said.
Eyal welcomed the news, announced yesterday by the Office of the Prime Minister of Israel, that in the coming days medicines will enter the Strip for the hostages, since 75% require treatment, although he clarified that the “measure is insufficient and he comes late”.
“The hostages need medical attention, visits from doctors and that the Red Cross can visit them to verify their condition as required by the Geneva Convention,” he stated.
Yair Keshel, uncle of Yarden Bibas, kidnapped along with her young children Ariel, 4 years old, and Kfir, 11 months, demanded that the world “do everything possible to bring them back now.”
“They are the only children who are still captive, two small children, one of them a baby, who has been 9, 10 and 11 months old while there,” Yair lamented about the case of the Bibas family.
This week it emerged that both Israel and Hamas had declined an agreement proposal, presented by Qatar, that included the release of all hostages in exchange for a permanent ceasefire.
