Release of Gaza hostages is delayed until Friday

Additional time is connected to list of hostage names Hamas provided to Israeli officials.

Tel Aviv's Museum of Modern Art displays a montage of the hostages. Picture: Getty Images

A planned release of 50 hostages held in Gaza along with 150 Palestinian prisoners and a pause in fighting has been delayed hours before it was set to begin on Thursday, Israeli, US and regional officials said.

“The start of the release will take place according to the original agreement between the sides, and not before Friday,” Israel’s national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said Wednesday. Mr Hanegbi said contacts toward the release of the hostages continued.

The delay by at least a day is connected to the list of names Hamas provided to Israeli officials, according to US and regional officials. While Hamas provided name, gender and nationality for most of the individuals, there was a lack of information for some of the 50 hostages, complicating and delaying the release, a US official said.

A White House official said the parties involved in the hostage release deal are working out “final logistical details” for the first day of the agreement’s implementation.

“It is our view that nothing should be left to chance as the hostages begin coming home,” said Adrienne Watson, a spokeswoman for the White House’s National Security Council. “Our primary objective is to ensure that they are brought home safely. That is on track and we are hopeful that implementation will begin on Friday morning.”

The militant group didn’t hand over a detailed list of the first group of hostages set to be released and didn’t formally sign off on the mechanism for how the hostages would be released, senior Egyptian officials said. The agreement called for the 50 hostages to be released in stages over the course of four days.

The hold up is a twist in the drama surrounding the 236 hostages held by Hamas and other militants in Gaza since the October 7 attack on Israel that also killed more than 1200 people. Families of the hostages have been anxiously awaiting news of the release after pressuring the Israeli government to accept a deal that would free them.

Israel and Hamas said they approved the hostage-release agreement earlier this week, setting up an expected four-day cease-fire that would have been the first reprieve in the war in Gaza. More than 14,000 Palestinians have been killed, most of them women and children since the Israeli offensive began, according to health authorities in the Hamas-run enclave. The number doesn’t distinguish between combatants and civilians.

The agreement also included an increase in deliveries of humanitarian aid to the blockaded Gaza Strip and daily pauses in Israel’s drone surveillance of Gaza.

Hamas’s failure to provide a detailed list of the hostages slated for release had complicated negotiations toward their release in recent weeks, according to regional officials. Qatar, Egypt, and the US have been mediating in negotiations toward the agreement, which the Israeli government approved early Wednesday. US President Joe Biden personally intervened to spur the talks forward in recent days, according to officials familiar with the talks.

Egyptian officials, who have handled communication with Hamas’s leadership in Gaza, said they informed Qatar of the delay on Wednesday evening, according to people familiar with the situation.

Per the agreement, Hamas is to provide a detailed list of the hostages the evening before their release to Egypt, from where they would be handed off to Qatar and Israel. The list is then supposed to be handed over to the Red Cross, which is responsible for receiving the hostages the following day. Once physical verification is carried out by the Red Cross and Israel, the hostages would then be transferred to hospitals in Israel for checkups.

The Wall Street Journal