A man holds a placard with text in Hebrew that reads “Sorry! Welcome back” as people gather to watch news coverage, on the day of the release of hostages held in Gaza since the deadly October 7, 2023 attack, as part of a ceasefire deal in Gaza between Hamas and Israel, in Tel Aviv, on February 15, 2025.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Holding up signs reading “sorry and welcome back” and “complete the ceasefire”, hundreds of Israelis gathered in Tel Aviv’s “Hostages Square” on Saturday (February 15, 2025) to watch Hamas release three Israeli hostages from Gaza.

In smaller groups, friends and relatives of the released men — Israeli-American Sagui Dekel-Chen, 36, Israeli-Russian Sasha Trupanov, 29, and Israeli-Argentine Yair Horn, 46 — shed tears of joy at the sight of their loved ones, who were made to address a crowd in Gaza from a stage alongside rifle-wielding militants.

All three men were taken from Nir Oz, a kibbutz community near the Gaza border, during Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 which sparked the war.

Dekel-Chen’s wife, Avital, who gave birth to the couple’s third daughter two months after her husband was seized, was waiting for him at an army base in southern Israel.

“My breath has returned. He looks so handsome,” she said following his release in a call to her sister aired by Israel’s Kan public broadcaster.

Other relatives of Dekel-Chen said they were relieved to see him alive.

“I am excited, and I see that he looks OK, and I want to hug him,” his mother-in-law told Kan, wiping away tears.

Dekel-Chen’s sister-in-law said: “Thank God that everything is OK and they were on their feet.”

They watched the release from the town of Carmei Gat in southern Israel, where some residents of Nir Oz have moved to since the attack.

A new path’

‘In Kfar Saba, in central Israel, a friend of the Horn family, Ronnie Milo, told AFP that she was experiencing “unimaginable joy” on seeing him return alive.

Ronli Nissim, of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum campaign group, said: “It’s an emotional roller coaster, and also very bittersweet.”

“Every time someone comes back… we are just a jumble of emotions,” she said.

“But then we’re thinking about everyone who’s left behind, and we know that they are mistreated, we know that they’re in hell, and they’re just waiting to be released.”

So far under the Gaza truce, 19 Israeli hostages have been released in exchange of hundreds of Palestinians in Israeli custody.

The 42-day first phase of the truce stipulates the release of a total of 33 hostages, including eight Israel says are dead, in exchange for some 1,900 Palestinian prisoners.

Out of the 251 people abducted during the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas militants, 70 remain in Gaza, with half of them dead according to the Israeli military.

In Ramat Gan, near Tel Aviv, Trupanov’s friends and family clapped, cheered and cried as they watched the 29-year-old, who had been held by Hamas’s ally Islamic Jihad, step out of a car in Gaza.

In a statement from the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, Trupanov’s family said they were grateful to see him return.

“Finally, Sasha can be surrounded by his loved ones and begin a new path,” said the statement, adding that they did not know if Trupanov was “aware that his father, Vitaly, was murdered on October 7”.

“This knowledge — or lack thereof — will completely transform his homecoming from a day of great joy to one of deep mourning for his beloved father,” they said.

Gaza:

Palestinians took to the streets across Gaza as they celebrated the much-anticipated ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel, which came into effect on Sunday at 11:15 am local time after a three-hour delay. Thousands of people, who were forced to go into hiding during 15 months of devastation, rushed back to see what remained of their homes while others visited the graves of relatives. 

In the southern city of Khan Younis, Armed Hamas fighters drove through streets as crowds cheered for them and chanted “Greetings to Al-Qassam Brigades” – the armed wing of Hamas. Dressed in blue uniforms, several Hamas policemen were also seen deployed in some areas after months of trying to keep out of sight to avoid Israeli airstrikes.

الفصائل الفلسطينية يتجولون في شوارع غزة ويشاركون الأهالي فرحة الانتصار وانتهاء الحرب. pic.twitter.com/v2XRe511rN

— شبكة قدس الإخبارية (@qudsn) January 19, 2025

“All the resistance factions are staying in spite of (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu,” one fighter told news agency Reuters, referring to the armed wing.

“This is a ceasefire, a full and comprehensive one God willing, and there will be no return to war in spite of him,” he added. 

بعد وقف الحرب… الأهالي يحتفلون بالطبيب العراقي محمد طاهر ويحملونه على الأكتاف تقديرا لبقائه في غزة وإنقاذ أرواح المئات من المصابين. pic.twitter.com/YYut5OpnaC

— شبكة قدس الإخبارية (@qudsn) January 19, 2025

Palestinians Return Home

In Gaza City, where some of the most intense Israeli airstrikes and battles with the militants took place, hundreds of people picked their way through a devastated landscape of rubble and twisted metal. People waved the Palestinian flag and filmed the scenes on their mobile phones as several carts loaded with household possessions travelled down a thoroughfare scattered with rubble and debris.

بصمودهم حطموا جميع مخططات التهجير.. فلسطينيون يعودون أفواجاً إلى شمال غزة pic.twitter.com/6Z0VbCEH64

— شبكة قدس الإخبارية (@qudsn) January 19, 2025

People who had to leave their homes to save their lives welcomed the ceasefire as another shot at life. 

“We are in pain, deep pain and it is time that we hug one another and cry, “Gaza City resident Ahmed Abu Ayham, 40, old Reuters via a chat app.  

Ayham had been sheltering with his family in Khan Younis for months. He said the scene of destruction in his home city was “dreadful”, adding that while the ceasefire may have spared lives it was no time for celebrations.

According to Aya, a displaced woman from Gaza City, who has been sheltering in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip for over a year, the ceasefire came as another shot at life.

“I feel like at last I found some water to drink after getting lost in the desert for 15 months. I feel alive again,” Aya said.

She added, “The war ended, but life isn’t going to be better because of the destruction and the losses we suffered. But at least there will be no more bloodshed of women and children, I hope.”

Aide Enters Gaza After Months

Long lines of trucks carrying fuel and aid supplies entered Gaza on Sunday after a truce between Israel and Hamas went into effect, the United Nations said.

The deal requires 600 truckloads of aid to be allowed into Gaza every day of the initial six-week ceasefire, including 50 carrying fuel. Half of the 600 aid trucks would be delivered to Gaza’s north, where experts have warned famine is imminent.

“First trucks of supplies started entering” minutes after the ceasefire took effect on Sunday morning, UN aid official Jonathan Whittall, interim chief of the UN’s OCHA aid agency for the Palestinian territories, said on X.

“A massive effort has been underway over the past days from humanitarian partners to load and prepare to distribute a surge of aid across all of Gaza.”

The UN did not give details on where the shipments entered Gaza, but an Egyptian source news agency AFP that “197 trucks of aid and five of fuel entered through the crossing of Kerem Shalom between Israel and Gaza and that of al-Oga” and Nitzana between Egypt and Israel. 

Israel-Hamas Ceasefire

The ceasefire deal took effect after a nearly three-hour delay, pausing a war that has brought seismic political change to the Middle East and giving hope to Gaza’s 2.3 million people, many of whom have been displaced several times.

The highly anticipated ceasefire deal could help usher in an end to the Gaza war, which began after Hamas, which controls the tiny coastal territory, attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, according to Israeli authorities. Israel’s response has reduced much of Gaza to rubble and killed nearly 47,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza-based health officials.