Within a day, opposition leader Benny Gantz ended eight months of emergency power sharing and resigned from the war cabinet over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the war.
By midweek, as the rescued Israelis were being evaluated by doctors and psychologists and details of their ordeal were beginning to emerge, the strategic and political divisions tearing at the country were back on full display. Factions fought bitterly over the latest cease-fire talks and attempts to draft more ultra-Orthodox men into the army.
Far from easing the domestic pressure on Netanyahu, hostage advocates said the rescue mission had boosted public support for a negotiated settlement.
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“We realize this is not something that can be replicated 120 times,” said Yossi Moatti, the CEO of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, Israel’s lead hostage advocacy group, referring to the number of captives still held in Gaza. “We realize that the deal is the only way to get the other hostages out.”
He said the movement, which has become more visible in weekly protests calling for the ouster of Netanyahu’s far-right government, would not stop taking to the streets or confronting Israeli leaders whenever possible. Hostage families staged a stormy protest in a parliamentary meeting Monday and planned to gather outside a military base in Tel Aviv on Wednesday night.
Momentum would build, Moatti predicted, pointing to the surge in turnout for street demonstrations just hours after news of the rescue broke.
The mood that night was at once joyous and furious. Some marchers said they had come out for the first time in months.
“That is why there is hope,” Moatti said. “We saw many, many people more than usual coming out of their houses to say, ‘Take the deal!”
Public frustration has soared as round after round of cease-fire talks have come and gone.
The latest initiative, promoted by President Biden as an “Israeli proposal,” would begin with a six-week pause in fighting and the release of women, children, elderly and wounded hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
But negotiators have been unable to reconcile competing visions of when the war should end. Hamas has insisted on a timeline for a final cessation of hostilities; Netanyahu has said Israeli forces will keep fighting until the militant group has been destroyed.
Among those pushing for the government to accept a cease-fire were relatives of the four hostages freed Saturday.
“I am one of the lucky ones,” Orit Meir, the mother of 22-year-old Almog Meir Jan, said in a hospital news conference Tuesday. “There is a deal on the table. We ask the Israeli government to move forward with the deal.”
Like the rest of the rescued hostages, Meir Jan was kidnapped from the Nova dance festival on Oct. 7. He was being held by armed guards alongside Shlomi Ziv, a 41-year-old who lived near the Lebanese border, and Andrey Kozlov, a 27-year-old recent immigrant from Russia, both of whom worked security at the rave.
The most well-known captive was 26-year-old Noa Argamani, who became a symbol of the mass kidnapping after a video of her being driven screaming into Gaza on a motorcycle went viral.
All four were reportedly in good health when helicopters whisked them from the fighting in the Nuseirat refugee camp and touched down at a hospital just outside Tel Aviv. But like other freed hostages, they have returned to a different, and often tragic, new normal.
Meir Jan learned soon after landing that his father had died hours before. Relatives said Yossi Jan, who lived alone in central Israel, had become isolated and overwhelmed by his son’s ordeal, lost 45 pounds, and spent hours fixated on television news.
When he didn’t answer phone calls from the military Saturday to tell him that Almog was safe, Yossi’s sister drove to his home and found him in the living room, dead of an apparent heart attack.
“My brother died of grief and didn’t get to see his son return,” the sister, Dina Jan, told Israeli public broadcaster Kan.
Argamani learned that her mother had brain cancer and was clinging to life, despite having gone through experimental treatments to buy time for a reunion with her daughter. Hours after being freed, Argamani traveled to another medical center to be with her.
“Noa learned about her mother’s complex condition from the medical team,” Ronni Gamzu, CEO of Ichilov Hospital, said at a news conference Sunday. He said that the patient’s comprehension was limited but that he thought there had been a “reasonable” degree of communication between mother and daughter.
The former hostages have been released from their own hospital stays, where they began a multidisciplinary acclimation program that health professionals have been honing since a wave of 105 hostages was released in November. The program includes physical exams, psychological counseling, and screenings for rape and sexual abuse.
Hostages are not pressed to recount their experiences too quickly. They and their families are housed in dedicated facilities mostly shielded from media attention. But details of their condition, and their experiences inside Gaza, have begun to trickle out through family, friends and Israeli officials.
Meir Jan told his sister that he and the other male captives were sometimes allowed to watch Al Jazeera, she recounted to reporters at a news conference, and saw extensive coverage of the hostage family demonstrations in Israel.
Argamani has told others that she was moved to several different locations and was occasionally dressed in traditional Arab clothing. She tried to stay positive through mindfulness exercises, according to an account of her meeting with Shin Bet Security Chief Ronen Bar, and could sometimes hear “nonstop” Israeli shelling.
“Once I heard a report on the radio that Israel was against ending the war, and it broke me,” she told Bar, according to the Israeli outlet Ynet.
Soroka reported from Tel Aviv. Heidi Levine in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.
