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AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
The Israeli military has announced it now believes 229 hostages are being held by Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza. The hostages were seized on October 7th, when Hamas carried out a shocking attack that Israel says killed about 1,400 people. Hamas has released four hostages so far. On Thursday, Hamas officials claimed the Israeli bombardment of Gaza has already killed 50 of the hostages, but the group did not provide any evidence to back up this claim. A Hamas official who’s part of a delegation visiting Moscow says the group will not release any more hostages until Israel halts the airstrikes.
Meanwhile, families of the hostages continue to call for their loved ones to be safely returned. This is Hadas Calderon in Tel Aviv.
HADAS CALDERON: Five members of my family have been kidnapped — five — my mom, my niece, two children, Erez, Sahar, and their father, Ofer. A week ago, I was announced — I got information that my mom and my niece been murdered. I didn’t even have time to grieve and to go to the funeral. Today, a week after, I went up to the grave. So today I was crying and grieving, and now I’m celebrating. You know, it’s a surrealistic situation. … We are celebrating my son Erez. He’s 12 years old today. We’re celebrating his birthday. He loves the mountain bike, and his father also is very professional in riding bike. So, that’s what you see. And I wish he could be here to enjoy with everybody and to feel like a normal boy.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined now in Jerusalem by Gershon Baskin. He is Middle East director of the International Communities Organization, a human rights advocacy group. In 2011, he helped negotiate the release of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit from Hamas captivity after five years, in exchange for the release of 1,027 Palestinian prisoners. His memoir is called In Pursuit of Peace in Israel and Palestine.
Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Gershon Baskin. If you can say what you think needs to happen right now?
GERSHON BASKIN: What needs to happen is what Hamas spoke about already two weeks ago, which is a release of what they call the civilian hostages in exchange for an immediate ceasefire. That’s what Hamas has been saying since yesterday. And yesterday, there was a change of tone from Mousa Abu Marzook. He’s the Hamas official who went to Moscow. I communicated with Dr. Mousa Abu Marzook yesterday, who for the first time said, “There needs to be a ceasefire first, and then we’ll talk about the hostages.”
Right now Hamas is holding women, children, elderly people, wounded and sick people, who it’s obviously against international humanitarian law to hold them, to abduct them, to kill them. It’s also against Islam. It’s against their own beliefs in the Qur’an to take women and children and elderly people as hostages.
I think that Israel is prepared to grant a ceasefire to stop the bombardment of Gaza and to enable civilian hostages to come home. We have to be clear also who we’re talking about, because, for Hamas, every Israeli is a soldier. So it needs to be defined who they are talking about when they’re talking about civilians.
But there’s a big complication here, because Hamas is probably not holding all the hostages. The Hamas political leadership, which is scattered between Gaza, Beirut and Doha, is not in charge of the hostages, and it’s not clear that when they make an obligation, say, to the Qatari government that they’re willing to negotiate some kind of deal, that they are actually able to implement the deal. There’s a big question about it, of who is talking to the people who have control of the hostages and whether or not Hamas at all has control of all the hostages, because some were taken by Islamic Jihad, some by PFLP, and some by individuals who are holding hostages.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about your back channels, Gershon, to Hamas, to Egypt and to Qatar.
GERSHON BASKIN:…