Free hostages before fighting Hezbollah, desperate families in Israel say

Clutching a photograph of his missing son, Tal, Gilad Korngold has spent months battling to keep the spotlight on the more than 100 hostages still facing unknown fates at the hands of Palestinian militant group Hamas and other factions in the Gaza Strip.

Now, Korngold fears that a new war that appears to be looming with Hezbollah guerrillas based close to Israel’s northern border could mean the hostages are forgotten.

In the first days and weeks, Israeli captives in the sliver of land in the west of southern Israel were a priority, but they are now “last on the list” for Israeli authorities, Gilad told journalists gathered in central Tel Aviv.

“We have a huge danger from the north, and I believe if we have [war] in the north, the hostages will disappear forever,” he said.

More than 240 people were taken as hostages from Israel into Gaza by Hamas fighters after the Palestinian organization, designated a terrorist group by the U.S., launched an unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7. Approximately 1,200 people died in Israel and more than 5,400 others were injured.

Israeli authorities, vowing to destroy Hamas and rescue the hostages, then launched a full-scale offensive on the densely populated Gaza Strip, now approaching the nine-month mark.

Figures from the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza put the Palestinian death toll in the territory since October at more than 37,700. Tallies from Hamas-led authorities have attracted some criticism, although they have been cited by the World Health Organization and the United Nations.

Around 120 hostages are unaccounted for in Gaza, but Israel has declared more than a third of them dead in captivity. A senior Hamas official told CNN in mid-June that “no one has an idea” of how many of the captives are still alive.

Israel has said it is wrapping up operations in the strip, freeing up resources it will then transfer to Israel’s northern border with Lebanon.

Gilad Korngold has spent months campaigning to keep attention on the hostages remaining in Gaza, including his son, 39-year-old Tal. The hostages’ release must come before anything else, he said.

Lebanese-based and Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah has been firing rockets, missiles and drones over the border into northern Israel since the start of the war in Gaza, in what it says is solidarity with Hamas.

Israeli authorities in the north have increasingly warned of an imminent, larger-scale war with Hezbollah. Israeli officials say upward of 60,000 people south of the border have been relocated, often to hotels, and between 90,000 and 100,000 residents in southern Lebanon have been displaced.

Speaking to journalists in Mitzpe Hila, a village around five miles from the Lebanese border, Israeli commanders said on Monday that Israel was carrying out both defensive and offensive operations against Hezbollah over the border, including through more than 6,000 airstrikes since the start of the war.

“Every day we are sending jet fighters over to destroy Hezbollah assets, if it is command and control positions [or] weapons depots, and we’ve been killing a lot of their senior officials,” one Israeli commander said amid the sound of drones overhead just miles from the Lebanon border.

Although Israeli officials have said they hope a diplomatic solution can be reached, its military has said it is prepared for any scenario and has “approved and validated” a new plan for a Lebanon offensive which would be the first such invasion since a month-long war in 2006 that followed a cross-border raid by Hezbollah.

The U.S. has said it wants to head off further escalation in the Middle East, and Iran’s mission to the United Nations has warned of “an obliterating war,” should Israel launch an offensive on Lebanon.

But the work in Gaza to retrieve the Israeli hostages must come before a push in the north, Korngold said. “Israel can do whatever they want after. First, the hostages.”

Korngold’s son, Tal, was taken by Hamas fighters from Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7, just a handful of miles from the Gaza border. He was thrown into the trunk of a car, Korngold said, and his family have heard nothing about his condition in the long months since.

Omri Miran, whose father, Dani, appeared exhausted and frustrated when speaking to the media in Tel Aviv, was taken from Nahal Oz—north of Be’eri and just hundreds of meters from the Gaza border—in the Hamas attack.

Dani Miran first heard news of his son when the first group of hostages were released from Gaza around six weeks after their capture, he said, and he glimpsed Omri in a Hamas-released video published in late April.

Hamas released more than 100 hostages in a brief ceasefire in late November, exchanged for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli custody.

Earlier this month, an Israeli operation successfully rescued four hostages, named as Noa Argamani, Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov, and Shlomi Ziv. Hamas said the action killed more than 200 Palestinians.

Camped out several times a week in Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square, 31-year-old journalist Hadar stands under a canopy with virtual-reality headsets and information sheets about Shlomi, who has recently returned to his family after a stay in hospital. The headsets and goggles simulate what it is like to be a hostage, as Hadar details Ziv’s journey to freedom.

“When I gave this speech before, I didn’t believe he was alive,” the journalist said. “I’m just trying to make you understand how many of them might be alive.”

This is the hope that Dani Miran holds onto, much like Noam, the 20-year-old granddaughter of Shlomo Mantzur, the oldest remaining hostage still in Gaza. No news has reached her, nor the rest of her family, about her grandfather, who she said was taken without his hearing aid and marked both his birthday and 60th wedding anniversary in captivity.

Mantzur was pulled from the family’s safe room in Kibbutz Kissufim, to the northeast of the Gazan city of Khan Younis. He was beaten and slapped before he was dragged toward a car alongside his wife, Mazal, Noam Mantzur recounted. His wife managed to escape.

Close to Miran, Noam Mantzur and Goldkorn was Luis Har. After 129 days in captivity in Gaza, Har was rescued by the Israeli Defense Forces in February, and is a beacon of hope for the families still in the dark about their loved ones.

Har was snatched along with four others and a dog on October 7, forced to walk for several hours through tunnels into Gaza before arriving at a second-floor apartment building.

He was then transferred to another building, where he spent the remaining weeks as a hostage. The three women in the group were released in the November exchange deal, but Har and fellow captive Fernando, were rescued in what he described via an interpreter as “one of the rare successful operations” by the Israeli military to retrieve the hostages.

Nothing is more important than the hostages’ return, Har told reporters.

Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has faced rising domestic criticism of his handling of the more than eight months of war in Gaza. Weekly demonstrations have called for an immediate ceasefire deal to return the hostages, with anti-government protesters converging on Netanyahu’s home in Jerusalem on Thursday.

The U.S. has set out a three-step peace plan, which includes the release of the hostages, that has been endorsed by the United Nations Security Council. It includes a “full and complete ceasefire” in Gaza.

Earlier this month, Netanyahu said he was prepared to make a partial deal to retrieve some of the hostages, but stressed he was “committed to continuing the war after a pause, in order to complete the goal of eliminating Hamas.”

Hamas has said it will not release the hostages still in Gaza until a permanent ceasefire is agreed and Israel pulls its forces from the strip.

Axios reported on Saturday that President Joe Biden‘s administration had tweaked the language of the proposed deal to push for an agreement from both Israel and Hamas, citing three anonymous sources with direct knowledge of the negotiations.

“I don’t care about Hamas,” Korngold said. “It’s my government, they have to do everything to release the hostages.”