Dan Morrison
The world heard for the first time Monday from one of Hamas' recently captured hostages, but confusion reigned over the number of captives Hamas and other groups are holding in Gaza. Israel revised its number to 199, nearly 50 more than previously reported, and Hamas said the overall figure was at least 200 and might be as high as 250
"We are currently unable to count all the Israeli prisoners in the Gaza Strip," said Hamas spokesman Abu Obeidah. "We estimate that there are 200-250."
More than a week after the October Hamas terror and hostage-taking, much about the hostages — their whereabouts, condition and in some cases even their identities — remains unclear.
Israel’s military said Monday that it had notified 199 families of loved ones believed to be held captive in Gaza, a sharp increase from the earlier estimate of 150. It wasn’t clear if the 199 included only Israelis or hostages from other countries as well.
For the first time, Hamas released footage of a hostage — a 21-year-old French-Israeli woman named Mia Shem, who was kidnapped from Sderot in Southern Israel and said to be receiving treatment for an arm injury in Gaza. She was seen in the video saying she had been "treated well" and that she hoped to go home as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, in addition to its new figure, Hamas said 22 hostages had been killed in the Israeli airstrikes that followed the October 7 massacre, and the group's Al-Qassam Brigades said that the captives would be freed "when conditions on the ground allow it." The group also said that hostages known to be serving in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) would not be released.
Some reports suggested confusion among the hostage-takers themselves, and a failure of foreign intelligence officials to contact senior Hamas officials. As Israeli drones and missiles rained down on Gaza last week, Hamas leaders were said to have “ditched their mobile phones and it was impossible to reach any of them,” according to an Egyptian official who spoke to the Wall Street Journal. “Every country with contacts to Hamas has tried.”
The actual hostage count may be even higher than the new estimates.
Missing persons' lists from several countries are longer than the list of hostages; in many cases, it isn't known whether people on those lists are being held hostage or were among those killed inside Gaza after their capture—either by their captors or by Israeli air strikes. Some may have been killed in the Oct 7 raids and have yet to be identified.
The U.S. has said it isn't sure how many Americans are currently held hostage by Hamas, nor where they are. A roster of the missing includes 13 Americans, six Russian citizens, a man and woman from Mexico, two Italians and at least one Philippine citizen — but the lists of missing persons from all these and almost two dozen more countries is much longer.
Some of the missing have been identified as captives through social media posts made by Hamas fighters or tracked in Gaza via their phones. For others, there’s no information at all.
In some cases, several members of one family are on the missing lists.
Adrienne Neta, 66, a former midwife, hasn’t been heard from since she told her children by phone that militants had burst into her home in the border community of Be’eri, where more than 100 were killed. Seven members of Neta's family, including two boys aged 3 and 5, were seen on video being abducted.
Where are they?
Israeli Defense Force spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said Monday the military had gleaned some intelligence on the whereabouts of the captives.
“We are making valiant efforts to try to understand where the hostages are in Gaza, and we have such information,” Hagari told reporters. He wouldn't elaborate.
Of the 22 hostages Hamas said have been killed in Israeli airstrikes, the group has named only one, a 19-year-old Israeli soldier. As for the rest, Abu Obeida, a spokesman for Hamas’s armed wing, said on Telegram that “dozens of hostages” had been hidden in “safe places and the tunnels of the resistance.”
While Israeli officials have pledged not to undertake actions that would put the captives at risk (“We will not carry out an attack that would endanger our people,” Hagari, the IDF spokesman, said), the Israeli military buildup and warning for 1.1 million people to evacuate from northern Gaza suggest a powerful offensive is coming — no matter what.
“I don’t think their chances of survival are very high,” Eitan Shamir, a senior lecturer at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, told The Messenger. “It's about Israel’s survival on the one hand, or the life of hostages.”
The captives, said Shamir, a former head of the national security doctrine department at Israel’s strategic affairs ministry, “will not come between Israel and its intention to destroy Hamas.”
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