As hostages return, Israelis struggle with releasing Palestinian prisoners

One of the last things Oran Almog saw was broken glass, blood and bodies after a suicide bombing in Israel rendered him blind when he was just 10 years old and killed 21 people, including his brother, father and grandparents. The man who planned the attack - Islamic Jihad militant leader Sami Jaradat - was released from an Israeli jail last month as part of a ceasefire deal to bring back Israeli hostages from Gaza and stop the fighting there.

Almog, now 32, and many Israelis are struggling to reach acceptance that the deal involves the release of Palestinians convicted for deadly attacks in decades of violence between Israelis and Palestinians. "It was incredibly painful - something inside my heart broke," Almog told Reuters after the release of Jaradat, who was sentenced to life in prison for his planning of the 2003 bombing in the port city of Haifa.

However, he added, "the high price we need to pay, and that I am paying personally, is less important at this moment because live Israeli hostages are going to return home." Under the agreement, reached with mediation by Egypt and Qatar, and support from the United States, 33 children, women and older men will be handed over in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and detainees, in a multi-phase process that could open the way to ending the war in Gaza. Many of those set for release are detainees picked up in Gaza and not charged with anything. Others, like Jaradat, are connected with deadly attacks during periods like the Second Intifada, two decades ago, when scores of Israelis were killed in suicide attacks like the one that blinded Almog.

Around 70% of Israelis support the Gaza deal, according to a poll published last month by Israel's Institute for National Security Studies. But a significant minority have opposed it, for reasons including a fear that it will leave the militant Hamas group in power in Gaza and the fact that it left the fate of more than 60 male hostages dependent on further negotiations, which may fail.

"Israel will pay a heavy price for this deal," said Shay Odesser, whose father and uncle were killed in an ambush in the occupied West Bank in 2002. All five of the militants who carried out that attack were freed in 2011 under a landmark deal which saw the release of 1,027 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Among those freed was Yahya Sinwar, the architect of the October 7, 2023 attack on Israeli communities, in which Israel says some 1,200 people were killed. More than 250 were taken hostage into Gaza.

LEARN FROM HISTORY Israel's subsequent campaign in Gaza has killed more than 47,000 Palestinians and devastated the coastal enclave, by Palestinian tallies.

The trauma of the deadliest attack in Israel's history as a state has left many Israelis fearful of a repeat. Odesser, 42, told Reuters that while his heart is warmed by Israeli hostages reuniting with their families, he worries that deals like the current one incentivise kidnapping Israelis because the perpetrators assume Israel will re-enter the cycle of hostage deals in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.

Three of those convicted over the deaths of his relatives were detained again after their 2011 release and are now free after the current hostage deal. "We need to learn from history, in the end there will be more death," he said. Some hardliners in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition say the accord hinders Israeli national security, prompting the resignation of Israel's former National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and two other ministers from his nationalist-religious party.

So far, 13 Israeli hostages from the 33 due for release in the first phase have been returned, along with five Thai workers taken hostage on the same day. With talks on a second phase of the ceasefire agreement now underway in Doha, "Bring Them Home", a group representing hostage families has urged for the talks to continue.

"Behind the words 'Phase 2' are faces, families, and an entire nation. We have no future and no hope without their return," it said in a statement.

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