A hostage and prisoner exchange
By Jodi Rudoren reporting for the New York Times, Monday morning NY time
I am the former Jerusalem bureau chief.
They’re free. Two years — 737 days, to be exact — after the Hamas terror attack that set off the war in Gaza, the last 20 living Israeli hostages left Gaza this morning. In exchange, nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees are being let go; the first buses filled with them just started arriving in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
The releases are part of the first phase of a cease-fire deal that took hold Friday. A triumphant President Trump, the force behind the deal, flew in Air Force One over jubilant crowds in Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square and timed the plane’s touchdown to coincide exactly with the first hostages’ arrival in Israel. He is about to address Israel’s Parliament and then will head to a summit of world leaders in Egypt, where the agreement was negotiated.
It’s Monday morning in Gaza. The release of the hostages (and Palestinian prisoners) is imminent, it seems.
May the war and the destruction and the famine and the killing of civilians stop now.
Reporting from the New York Times:
