OfMarta Serafini
The proportion of the exchange is one Israeli prisoner for 30 Palestinians. But the draft agreement reveals mistrust between the parties
FROM OUR REPORTER
TEL AVIV The giant plastic hourglass placed in the middle of Hostages Square is fake. It doesn’t have flowing sand. But time is certainly not at a standstill for the 124 hostages still in the hands of Hamas.
Yellow flowers, like the color chosen for the ribbon symbolizing the campaign, photographs, installations. But also two rows of small cypresses, for the dead hostages (30 according to Israeli intelligence). «The recent tragic murders of Chaim, Yoram, Amiram and Nadav (the last three Israeli prisoners declared dead, ed) highlight the urgency and need for immediate action. With each passing day, the lives of others are put at greater risk. We cannot afford to miss this moment,” explains Omer Tuval, spokesperson for the hostages’ families.
The square in front of the Tel Aviv Art Museum is no longer just a square. Activists, relatives of the hostages and demonstrators: everyone is waiting. “But are you saying they’re still alive?” is the question that now bounces around in every conversation. Whispered. So as not to hurt those who still hope. But if the truce were to come, who goes out first? According to what is stated in a draft agreement seen by Middle East Eyea more detailed scheme is envisaged than that included in the previous agreement. A cruel mathematics, readjusted to make the negotiation as less fragile as possible.
In the first phase, starting from the seventh day of the truce, 33 Israeli hostages should be freed. First, the women. Both Israeli civilians and soldiers are still imprisoned in the tunnels. It is not known who will be given priority and but generally those in worse health conditions or those who are pregnant are “favoured”. Subsequently they will also be released children Israelis, a fact that therefore gives hope for the 3 Bibas brothers, declared dead by the militiamen, while the army considers them alive. Then he elderly people (over 50 years old) and sick and injured civilian men.
At this stage the ratio is 1 to 30. That is, for each Israeli hostage of each category, 30 Palestinian minors under 19 not considered soldiers, 30 women, 30 elderly people (over 50 years old) and sick people will be released respectively. With a note, for every Israeli female soldier, as there is no equivalent on the other side, 30 Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences will be freed and 20 others with 15 years of prison still ahead.
The release of the Ethiopian-Israeli is also expected at this stage Avera Mengistu and the Arab-Israeli Hisham al-Sayed, seized by Hamas in 2014 and 2015 respectively, while the Israelis will release 47 prisoners from the Shalit agreement, first freed in exchange for the Israeli soldier’s return home and then imprisoned again.
The agreement for the truce and the release of the hostages has a further macabre annotation. “In the event that the number of living Israeli hostages does not reach 33, the difference will be made up by an equivalent number of bodies of the same categories.” A bureaucratic language that speaks of corpses but also of great uncertainty and little trust between the two parties. A stipulation imposed by Hamas is that released Palestinian prisoners will not be rearrested on the same charges for which they were previously incarcerated and that they will not be asked to sign any documents as a condition of their release.
And the rest of the hostages? They will be released in the second phase. While the exchange of the remaining bodies will take place in the third. But these are weeks light years away. Meanwhile the sand in the hourglass of Hostages Square is always there, still.
June 8, 2024
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