Israel security cabinet to discuss new phase of Gaza truce after Rubio visit

RAFAH, Palestinian Territories: Palestinian militants on Saturday freed two Israeli hostages, among the last live captives eligible for release under the first phase of a fragile truce that is also expected to see Palestinian prisoners released.

Freedom for the captives caps an emotional two days in Israel, where the family of another hostage, Shiri Bibas, earlier on Saturday confirmed receipt of her remains.

Bibas and her two young sons had become symbols of the ordeal suffered by Israeli hostages since the Gaza war began.

Palestinian militants seized dozens of captives during their unprecedented October 7, 2023 attack on Israel which triggered more than 15 months of war in the Gaza Strip.

Militants escorted Tal Shoham and Avera Mengistu onto a stage in Rafah, southern Gaza. Shoham was made to address the gathering, flanked by armed and masked fighters dressed all in black, before both men were handed over to the Red Cross which then drove them away in a convoy.

Israeli security forces took custody of the men and returned them home to Israeli territory, the military said.

In the Israeli city of Tel Aviv, hundreds gathered at a site known as ‘Hostages Square’ reacted with applause, some appearing to weep, as they watched a broadcast of the release.

Four other hostages are to be freed on Saturday morning in a separate ceremony in central Gaza.

Israeli campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum had published the names of the six Israelis to be freed. The list included Eliya Cohen, Omer Shem Tov, Omer Wenkert and Hisham Al-Sayed as well as Mengistu and Shoham.

Sayed and Mengistu had been held in Gaza for around a decade.

The hostages were freed under the first phase of a ceasefire deal which began on January 19 and is due to expire in early March.

A Hamas source said that the Islamist group planned to also release four hostages from central Gaza’s Nuseirat later in the morning.

At both locations the militants prepared for a now well-rehearsed ceremony, building stages in front of large posters advertising the militants’ cause or praising fallen fighters.

The Red Cross has repeatedly appealed for handovers to take place in a dignified manner.

Under a cold winter rain in Rafah, Hamas staged a show of force after months of bombardment and strikes that killed the group’s top leaders. Some fighters held automatic weapons, others rocket launchers, as nationalistic Palestinian music blared.

Hamas’s green flag flew around the square on buildings destroyed by the war.

The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club advocacy group said Israel would free 602 inmates on Saturday as part of the exchange.

A spokeswoman for the NGO told AFP that most were Gazans arrested after the war began. She added that some of the prisoners would be deported outside of Israel and the Palestinian territories after their release.

Those expected to be expelled were serving heavy sentences.

The ceasefire has so far seen 21 living Israeli hostages freed from Gaza in exchange for more than 1,100 Palestinian prisoners released from Israeli jails.

Saturday’s release of living hostages followed the first transfer on Thursday of hostages’ bodies.

Hamas had said Shiri Bibas’s remains were among the four bodies returned on Thursday, but Israeli analysis concluded they were not in fact hers, sparking an outpouring of grief and anger.

Hamas then admitted “the possibility of an error or mix-up of bodies,” which it attributed to Israeli bombing of the area.

Late Friday the Red Cross confirmed the transfer of more human remains to Israel “at the request of both parties” but did not say whose they were.

“After the identification process at the Institute of Forensic Medicine, this morning we received the news we feared the most. Our Shiri was murdered in captivity and has now returned home to her sons, husband, sister, and all her family to rest,” the Bibas family said in a statement.

On Friday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – under domestic pressure over his handling of the war and the hostages – vowed to “ensure that Hamas pays the full price for this cruel and evil violation of the agreement.”

On Friday, Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said, after an analysis of the remains, that Palestinian militants had killed the Bibas boys, Ariel and Kfir, “with their bare hands” in November 2023.

Hamas has long maintained an Israeli air strike killed them and their mother early in the war.

Shiri’s sister-in-law, Ofri Bibas, said Friday that the family was “not seeking revenge right now,” while levelling a measure of the blame at Netanyahu, telling him there would be “no forgiveness” for abandoning the mother and her young sons.

A fourth body, that of Oded Lifshitz, 83, was also returned Thursday.

Hamas and its allies took 251 people hostage during the October 7 attack that sparked the war. There are 65 hostages still in Gaza, including 35 the Israeli military says are dead.

The Hamas attack resulted in the deaths of 1,215 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 48,319 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory that the United Nations considers reliable.

DAMASCUS: Syria’s tiny Jewish community and Syrian Jews abroad are trying to build bridges after Bashar Assad’s ouster in the hope of reviving their ancient heritage before the community dies out.
This week, a small number of Jews living in Damascus, along with others from abroad, held a group prayer for the first time in more than three decades, in the Faranj synagogue in Damascus’s Old City.
“There were nine of us Jews (in Syria). Two died recently,” community leader Bakhour Chamntoub told AFP in his home in the Old City’s Jewish quarter.
“I’m the youngest. The rest are elderly people who stay in their homes,” the tailor in his sixties added in a thick Damascus accent.
After Islamist-led rebels finally toppled Assad in December last year after nearly 14 years of conflict, the country’s dwindling community has recently welcomed back several Syrian Jews who had emigrated.
Syria’s millennia-old Jewish community was permitted to practice their faith under Assad’s father, Hafez, and had friendly relations with their fellow countrymen.
But the strongman restricted their movement and prevented them from traveling abroad until 1992. After that, their numbers plummeted from around 5,000 to just a handful of individuals, headed by Chamntoub, who oversees their affairs.
AFP correspondents met with Chamntoub, known to neighbors and friends as “Eid,” after he returned from burying an elderly Jewish woman.
“Now there are seven of us,” he said, adding that a Palestinian neighbor had looked after the woman during her final days.

The 1967 Arab-Israeli war cast a heavy cloud over the Jewish communities in several Arab countries.
Syria lost most of the strategic Golan Heights to Israel, which later annexed them in a move never recognized by the international community as a whole.
Chamntoub said the community did not experience any “harassment” under Bashar Assad’s rule.
He said an official from the new Islamist-led administration had visited him and assured him the community and its properties would not be harmed.
Chamntoub expressed hope of expanding ties between the remaining Jews in Syria and the thousands living abroad to revive their shared heritage and restore places of worship and other properties.
On his Facebook page, he publishes news about the community — usually death notices — as well as images of the Jewish quarter and synagogues in Damascus.
He says nostalgic Syrian Jews abroad often make comments, recalling the district and its surroundings.
At the Faranj synagogue, Syrian-American Rabbi Yusuf Hamra, 77, led what he said was the first group prayer in decades.
“I was the last rabbi to leave Syria,” he said, adding that he had lived in the United States for more than 30 years.
“We love this country,” said Hamra, who arrived days earlier on his first visit since emigrating.
“The day I left Syria with my family, I felt I was a tree that had been uprooted,” he said.

His son Henry, traveling with him, said he was happy to be in the synagogue.
“This synagogue was the home for all Jews — it was the first stop for Jews abroad when they would visit Syria,” the 47-year-old said.
When war erupted in Syria in 2011 with Assad’s brutal suppression of anti-government protests, synagogues shuttered and the number of Jews visiting plummeted.
In the now devastated Damascus suburb of Jobar, a historic synagogue that once drew pilgrims from around the world was ransacked and looted, with a Torah scroll believed to be one of the world’s oldest among the items stolen.
Chamntoub said his joy at publicly worshipping in the Faranj synagogue again was “indescribable.”
He expressed hope that “Jews will return to their neighborhood and their people” in Syria, saying: “I need Jews with me in the neighborhood.”
Hamra said that like many emigrants, he was hesitant about returning permanently.
“My freedom is one thing, my family ties are another,” he said, noting that many in the 100,000-strong diaspora were long established in the West and reluctant to give up their lives and lifestyles there.
Chamntoub said many Jews had told him they regretted leaving Syria but that he doesn’t expect “a full return.”
“Maybe they will come for trips or to do business” but not to stay, he said.
He expressed hope of establishing a museum in Syria to commemorate its Jewish community.
“If they don’t return or get married and have children here, we will end soon,” he said.