Sawt Falasteen - Israel stalls Palestinians' release after six Gaza hostages freed

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who in a statement vowed to "continue acting decisively in order to bring all of our hostages back home", was due to convene a security consultation on Saturday evening, two Israeli officials said.

"Once the security consultation concludes, a decision will be made regarding the next steps" of the ceasefire agreement with Hamas, said one official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

In the Israeli-occupied West Bank and in the Gaza Strip, families were waiting for hours for their loved ones to be released from Israeli custody in exchange for the six Israelis taken back home.

"Yesterday, I received news that he would be released, but I still can't believe that my son will be free after 33 years," said Umm Diya al-Agha, 80, waiting at a southern Gaza hospital.

The Palestinian Prisoners' Club advocacy group said Israel would free 620 inmates on Saturday, most of them Gazans taken into custody during the war, but their release has stalled into the night.

The Israeli sources did not provide a clear reason for the delay, which comes after an emotional two days in Israel, where the remains of hostage Shiri Bibas have been identified after the initial handover of a different body.

Bibas and her two young sons, among dozens taken captive during Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that triggered the war, had become symbols of the ordeal suffered by the Israeli hostages.

The first phase of the truce, which has largely halted more than 15 months of devastating fighting in the Gaza Strip and has enabled the release of 30 captives, is due to expire in early March.

Negotiations for a second phase, which is meant to lead to a permanent end to the war, have yet to begin.

- 'Real hero' -

At a ceremony in Nuseirat, central Gaza, Eliya Cohen, 27, Omer Shem Tov, 22, and Israeli-Argentine Omer Wenkert, 23, waved while holding release certificates, flanked on a stage by masked Hamas militants before their handover to the Red Cross and return to Israeli soil.

"I saw the look on his face, he's calm, he knows he's coming back home... He's a real hero," said Wenkert's friend Rory Grosz.

At a similar ceremony in Rafah, southern Gaza, under the cold winter rain, militants handed over Tal Shoham, 40, and Avera Mengistu, 38, who both appeared dazed.

In the Israeli commercial hub of Tel Aviv, hundreds who gathered at a site known as "Hostages Square" applauded and some weeped as they watched a live broadcast of the releases.

A sixth hostage, Hisham al-Sayed, 37, was later released in private and taken back to Israeli territory, the military said.

A Hamas official told AFP that Sayed's separate release was to "honour and respect our people from the Palestinian communities living inside Israel".

Sayed, a Bedouin Muslim, and Mengistu, an Ethiopian Jew, had been held in Gaza for about a decade after they entered the territory individually.

Sayed's family called it "a long-awaited moment".

Relatives of Shoham wept and embraced as they watched his handover, video released by the Israeli government showed.

"Tal seems well considering the circumstances. An enormous weight is lifted from us," the family of the Austrian-Israeli dual national said in a statement.

- Domestic pressure -

On Thursday, the first transfer of hostages' bodies took place under the truce.

There was anger in Israel after analysis concluded that Shiri Bibas's remains were not among the four bodies returned.

Netanyahu, under domestic pressure over his handling of the war and the hostages, accused Hamas of violating the truce deal.

Late Friday, the Red Cross confirmed the transfer of more human remains, which the Bibas family said in a statement had been identified as Shiri's.

The family said she "was murdered in captivity and has now returned home... to rest."

Israel's military said that, after an analysis of the remains, Palestinian militants killed the Bibas boys, Ariel and Kfir, "with their bare hands" in November 2023.

Hamas has long maintained that an Israeli air strike killed them and their mother early in the war, and on Saturday dismissed the military's account as "baseless lies and fabrications".

Out of 251 people taken hostage during the October 2023 attack, 62 are still in Gaza including 35 the Israeli military says are dead.

The Hamas attack resulted in the deaths of 1,215 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel's retaliatory campaign has killed at least 48,319 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory that the United Nations considers reliable.

H.Nasr--SF-PST