TEL AVIV, Israel β Four female Israeli soldiers were released by Hamas in Gaza City and Palestinian prisoners were released by Israel on Saturday, the start of a second week of a planned six-week ceasefire and hostage release deal that has halted 15 months of fighting and delivered to Hamas a new platform to present an image of power. Hours before releasing the hostages, the militants paraded the women, dressed in army green, in a public square in Gaza, forcing them to climb a stage, smile and raise their arms for a gaggle of cameramen.
The hostages were then transferred to the Red Cross vans that would take them home to Israel. At the Israeli military facility at the border, at the hospital waiting to receive them, and at viewing parties across the country, parents, siblings and friends of the women β Liri Albag, 19, Naama Levy, 20, Karina Ariev, 20, and Daniella Gilboa, 20 β wept with joy at seeing the women walking on their own. Later Saturday, Palestinian prisoners were released from the Ofer and Ketziot prisons as part of the ceasefire agreement, a spokesperson for the Israel Prison Service said.
Among them was Wael Qassem, the leader of a Hamas cell in East Jerusalem and one of the most prominent of some prisoners serving life sentences who were included in the ceasefire deal, according to an organization that represents Palestinian prisoners. Qassem received 35 life terms for involvement in deadly attacks against Israelis during the second intifada, the mass Palestinian uprising of the early s.
In Israel, relatives of the four hostages expressed an overwhelming sense of relief at their return. Under the deal, Israel is also expected to partially withdraw its troops to facilitate the movement of hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians to their homes in the northern Gaza Strip.
At Netzarim Corridor, a four-mile road that Israel paved during the war to divide the Strip in two, long lines of people were gathering on Saturday afternoon in anticipation of the opening. But Israel said Saturday that Hamas had violated the deal, which required it to release all living civilian women first.
