On October 13, Hamas freed the last 20 living hostages it had held in the Gaza Strip for two years, complying with the deal that it and Israel agreed to on October 8 in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt. US President Donald Trump had proposed the agreement in late September, and the details were hammered out in the first week of October.
The 20 released hostages were all men, a mix of soldiers and civilians, mostly in their twenties, who were kidnapped on October 7, 2023. They were held for 738 days in Gaza. As part of the deal, Hamas is supposed to return the remaining 28 bodies of deceased hostages it still holds. However, as of October 13, reports state the group plans only to return four of the deceased.
On October 12, the day before the hostages were freed, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced that the name of the operation to receive the hostages is “Returning Home.” Simultaneously, the IDF completed a withdrawal and redeployment to a new line in Gaza, pulling back from Gaza City and other areas as per the deal agreed to in Egypt.
US Envoy Steve Witkoff traveled to Gaza on October 11 with US Central Command head Admiral Brad Cooper and IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir. “The visit was meant to verify that Israel had completed its withdrawal from Gaza in accordance with the cease-fire terms,” Israel’s Ynet noted. The IDF is expected to withdraw in phases, the first phase coinciding with the release of the 48 hostages, living and dead. Subsequent phases, if they occur, would see the IDF withdraw from controlling around 50 percent of Gaza to controlling a small zone along the border.
As the IDF has withdrawn from areas in Gaza, Hamas fighters have reemerged from hiding, carrying arms. They have also clashed with other Gazans, killing more than two dozen people.
“We are prepared to strike any enemy who dares to raise its head. We went out to defend on October 7th, from a shattering failure that will be engraved in the memory of every Israeli soldier and commander. We will never cease to implement the lessons of that day so that the IDF will be ready to fulfill its mission and protect Israel’s civilians from any threat,” the IDF said in a statement on October 12.
In a national address, IDF Chief of Staff Zamir said that the last two years of fighting against Hamas constitute a victory over the terrorist group. “With the return of the hostages, we will have achieved one of the important objectives for which we went to war—an objective that is a national, moral, and Jewish commitment,” Zamir stated. The IDF reported that 915 Israeli soldiers had fallen in the war.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that the overall military campaign was not over on October 12. “There are still major security challenges ahead of us. Some of our enemies are trying to recover in order to attack us again.” Israel has faced a multi-front conflict over the last two years that has included threats from Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, and the West Bank. After the ceasefire, the Houthis in Yemen issued a statement saying that they would remain on “high alert” if Israel violates the agreement, which seems to indicate the group will pause launching missile and drone attacks at Israel.
The hostage release began early in the morning. The Red Cross sent vehicles to a meeting point in northern Gaza to receive the first seven of the hostages. The Israeli military sent helicopters to its Reim base near the border with Gaza to fly the hostages to three Israeli hospitals where rooms had been prepared to receive them. Several of the families of the hostages received phone calls from their loved ones in the morning as the young men were being brought by Hamas to the meeting point with the Red Cross.
The first seven hostages were transferred to the IDF at around nine in the morning. A further 13 were freed over the next two hours, as President Donald Trump arrived in Israel and traveled to the Israeli parliament to speak. Trump subsequently left Israel in the late afternoon to fly to Egypt for a summit at Sharm el Sheikh that is focused on Gaza and includes representatives from more than 20 countries.
On October 13, Israel released a number of Palestinian prisoners and detainees. “Under the deal, Israel is set to release 250 Palestinians convicted of murder and other serious crimes as well as 1,700 Palestinians detained in Gaza since the war began, 22 Palestinian minors, and the bodies of 360 militants,” Arab News noted.
By Monday evening, Ynet reported that Hamas said it could “return the bodies of only four Israeli hostages,” naming “the deceased as Daniel Perez, Yossi Sharabi, Guy Iluz and Bipin Joshi—the latter of whom had previously been classified as having a grave risk to his life.” IDF Spokesperson Effie Defrin demanded that Hamas uphold the agreement, which calls for the return of all the bodies of the hostages.
