SOURCE :- THE AGE NEWS
They were the three words that convinced Eli Bibas that something terrible had happened to his family. “I love you,” his son Yarden wrote to him in a text message on October 7, 2023, as Hamas terrorists stormed through the kibbutz in southern Israel where he lived with his wife and two young children.
Bibas, who lived in another kibbutz 20 kilometres away, pleaded for his son to tell him more. He received no response. Watching news of the attacks on television, Bibas saw that his daughter-in-law Shiri and two grandchildren had been captured and abducted into Gaza. So, he would later learn, had his son. Yarden gave himself up to Hamas in the mistaken belief it would prevent his wife and children from being kidnapped, Bibas was later told by a now-released hostage who met his son in Gaza.
Eli Bibas’ son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren were taken hostage during the October 7 attack in 2023.Credit: Kate Geraghty
Bibas’ grandchildren, with their distinctive red hair, quickly became some of the most famous and beloved Israeli hostages because they were so young. Ariel, aged four at the time of the attack, adored tractors, bicycles and the superhero Batman. Kfir, aged just nine months, was the youngest person taken hostage on October 7. He had only just begun to crawl when he was abducted.
“I spend every day, every minute, every hour thinking about them,” Eli Bibas told photographer Kate Geraghty and me in Tel Aviv in October on the eve of the first anniversary of the attacks. “I hope we won’t need to wait another year for them to come home.”
Three months later, Bibas’ agonising wait looks to finally soon be over. All his family members were included on a leaked list of names set for release in the first phase of a ceasefire deal that Israel and Hamas struck on Thursday. Hamas has reportedly agreed to release 33 hostages from Sunday in exchange for a pause in fighting, the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and an increase in humanitarian aid to Gaza.
We met Bibas at the headquarters of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, the biggest group campaigning for the release of hostages from Gaza. Many members of this group have been highly critical of Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and believe he could have struck an almost identical deal many months ago. A separate, more conservative group of hostage families, known as the Tikva Forum, has said it is “deeply concerned” about the deal because it does not guarantee the release of all hostages and could allow Hamas to remain in power in Gaza.
When we met him in Tel Aviv, Bibas was confident that his son Yarden, 35, was alive. He was unsure about his daughter-in-law and grandchildren. They were supposed to have been freed in an initial November 2023 ceasefire deal but were not. Hamas’ armed wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, claimed the three were killed in Israeli airstrikes but did not provide any evidence. Bibas took some comfort in the fact Hamas had previously claimed that a hostage had died, only for this to be later proven untrue. “Until there is certainty, we are waiting for a miracle,” he told us.
Asked if he ever gave up hope, he replied: “No, I’m not allowed to.”
A protester holds a sign with a picture of the kidnapped Bibas family during a demonstration in Tel Aviv last month.Credit: Getty Images
The abduction of his loved ones thrust Bibas, a softly spoken retired airconditioning technician, into a life of political activism and international media attention. Like many other hostage families, he was sceptical of Netanyahu’s motives and believed he may have been slow-walking a ceasefire deal to prolong the war in Gaza and remain in power.
Still, Bibas joined Netanyahu on a trip to Washington last July, where he presented US President Joe Biden and then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump with a framed drawing by Ariel. This angered some hostage families who felt Netanyahu was using Bibas as a political pawn, but Bibas believed he had no choice.
“For me it was important to tell my story no matter what and to give those pictures to Biden and Trump,” he said. “If I could speak to my family I would tell them we are doing everything we can all the time to bring them back.”
Within days, Eli Bibas may be able to hug his loved ones for the first time in more than 15 months. At the very least, he will know whether they are alive.
There are more families who will be waiting for later releases of hostages. About 100 are believed to still be in Gaza, though it is not known how many are alive.
“We are aware of the reports noting that all members of our family are included in the first stage of the agreement and that Shiri and the children are among the first to be released,” the Bibas family said in a statement released this week.
“We have gained enough experience and disappointments and therefore there is no end to the story until our loved ones cross the border.”
Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for the weekly What in the World newsletter here.
