What if Hamas wanted to prolong this war, launched on Saturday October 7 from the Gaza Strip against Israel? In total, 150 Israelis are being held by the Islamist movement, according to the Israeli embassy in France. Hamas, for its part, speaks of 163 hostages in the Gaza Strip. Unprecedented in terms of scale. For its part, the Israeli army confirmed the hostage taking, without giving details of the figures. Where are they ? Some appear to have been taken to Gaza, others are believed to be held prisoner in Israeli territory.
A 26-year-old Franco-Israeli could also have been kidnapped by Hamas on Saturday morning in the south of Israel, MP Meyer Habib, elected in the constituency of French people living abroad including Israel, announced this Sunday. Originally from Bordeaux, and named Avidan, he was participating in a music festival, a rave party in the desert targeted by the attackers, the MP said on the X platform. “He could be detained by the terrorists. His family, his father, with whom I spoke at length, have not heard from him” since Saturday morning, he added. Meyer Habib told AFP that he had informed the French authorities of concerns regarding this French national who lived in Israel and who was able to send “a message of distress” to his family on Saturday morning.
This Sunday, an Egyptian official said that Israel had requested help from Cairo to ensure the safety of the kidnapped Israelis. According to Egypt’s intelligence chief, Palestinian leaders said they did not yet have a “full picture” of the hostages, but said those brought to Gaza are in “secure locations.”
Since the surprise attack carried out by Hamas on Saturday October 7, social networks have been full of unbearable videos showing Hamas fighters dragging lifeless Israeli soldiers to the ground and parading captured civilians through the streets of Gaza. Among the hostages, there are soldiers but also civilians including children, the elderly, women and even the disabled… More than half of these civilian hostages are believed to be young people who were partying during the night from Friday to Saturday during a rave party in a field, right next to the border with Gaza, where the potentially kidnapped young Frenchman was.
On social networks, a video that has gone viral shows a young woman, named Noa Argamani, being kidnapped at the festival. She was identified by her companion’s brother, also on site. “I saw Noa in the video, distraught, terrified, I can’t imagine the panic that seized her when she was taken away on that motorcycle,” the brother told the Israeli channel Channel 12. “The Israeli social networks and radio stations are flooded with requests for information and desperate appeals,” he said. The Washington Post live.
Officers, children, women…
Beyond civilians, Hamas leader Saleh Al-Arouri also claims to have kidnapped “senior Israeli officers”. In a statement to Hamas’ Al-Aqsa TV channel, the Palestinian terrorist group’s military spokesperson, Abu Ubaida, assures that the number of hostages taken in Gaza is “much higher than Netanyahu thinks” and that they are detained in various places in the coastal strip.
These hostage takings mark a major escalation in this conflict. By doing this, Hamas hopes to prolong the effects of its surprise attack on Israel. With Islamic Jihad, they claim “to have enough Israeli hostages to free all Palestinian detainees.” In Palestine, the fate of prisoners held in Israel is an important issue. The Jewish state currently has a “pool” of around 4,500 Palestinian detainees convicted, currently on trial or in administrative detention for “terrorist activities”. The issue of hostages was one of the first things mentioned by Hamas, once again proving the thoughtful nature of this operation.
Hostages: a sensitive issue for Israel
Far from being a simple consequence of the war, these hostage-takings open an additional front. Thus, Hamas could seek to negotiate very harshly the release of its Israeli hostages. The Hamas spokesperson urged Israel not to make “miscalculations,” adding that “what happens to the people of the Gaza Strip will happen to the hostages.”
The hostage issue is very sensitive for the Jewish state. “Israel has in the past reacted very vigorously to the capture of soldiers and civilians,” recalls The Times of Israel. In 2011, we remember the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, against 477 Palestinian prisoners (including 27 women). But ten years later, the situation looks very different. On the second day of the surprise Hamas attack, the Israeli Prime Minister barely mentioned the hostages in his speech on Saturday evening. He simply warned Hamas that “Israel will take revenge on all those who are injured, he declared, even by a hair’s breadth of their heads.”