The announcement was made this Friday morning by Emmanuel Macron. “Our fellow citizens Ofer Kalderon and Ohad Yahalomi appear on the list of 33 hostages who must be released in the first phase of the Gaza agreement,” the French president indicated on January 17 on the social network release so that their families can find them,” he added.
The day before, on RTL, the head of French diplomacy Jean-Noël Barrot had indicated that there was “no certainty” about the fate of these two Franco-Israeli hostages still detained in the Gaza Strip. “For too many months, we have not heard from them […] We very much hope that they can return to us alive and in good health,” declared Jean-Noël Barrot, while a truce providing for the release of hostages is due to come into force on Sunday January 19 between Israel and Palestinian Hamas.
During the Hamas attack in Israel on October 7, 2023, “48 of our compatriots lost their lives, eight were taken hostage, two of them unfortunately died, four of us returned, including the children of Ofer and Ohad, and it is now these two hostages whose return we are awaiting,” recalled Jean-Noël Barrot. “We have no certainty, no news” about their fate, “except the testimonies of those who returned from the hell of Gaza,” added the minister.
In total, 251 people were kidnapped on October 7, 2023, and 94 are still held in Gaza, of whom 34 died according to the Israeli army. The agreement reached between Israel and Hamas plans to enter into force on Sunday for a first phase of six weeks including a ceasefire, the release of 33 hostages, starting with women and children, in exchange for a thousand Palestinians detained by Israel and a withdrawal Israeli densely populated areas.
Ofer Kalderon, “a good father”
Carpenter and father of four children, including the two youngest, Erez and Sahar, 12 and 16 years old at the time, were kidnapped before being released on November 27, 2023 during the temporary truce agreement, Ofer Kalderon, who is now 54 years old, is still detained by Hamas. Abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, he is described as “a good father, loving and close to his children”. “Don’t ask me if Ofer is alive, I don’t know,” declared to TF1, on the eve of the first commemorations of October 7, his ex-wife, Hadas Jaoui-Kalderon, who managed to escape Hamas in hiding in a shelter.
“We are hidden in a bush, we jumped out of the window,” he wrote to her, the day of the attack, in a last message, as she told the newspaper in December 2023 The World. For Ifat Kalderon, cousin of Ofer Kalderon interviewed by AFP on Wednesday after the announcement of a truce, “there are mixed feelings, on the one hand joy, mixed with horrible stress before knowing that things are going well really happen.” “I believe Ofer is alive and I hope he comes back,” she added.
Ohad Yahalomi, a nature lover
Like Ofer Kalderon, Ohad Yahalomi was in Kibbutz Nir Oz during the Hamas attack. This father of three, now aged 50, was kidnapped with his son Eitan, 12 years old at the time of his kidnapping, released on November 27, 2023 after spending 52 days hostage in Gaza. Before his kidnapping, Ohad Yahalomi was an employee of the Parks and Nature Authority. He “loves family and nature,” according to his wife Bat-Sheva.
On October 7, 2023, she told France 2, “we were at home, in the security room. After two hours of shouting in Arabic and gunshots, my husband decided to leave the room to close the door. The terrorists entered the house and shot my husband. “My husband was injured. It was the last moment I saw him,” she added.
His relatives have received no proof of life in 15 months. “What breaks me is the despair, the idea that (the hostages) are losing hope and do not believe that they will one day be saved,” Bat-Sheva Yahalomi told AFP in October 2024. “I also think the last thing he saw was us being kidnapped, and he probably doesn’t know what happened to us,” she said, referring to the moment when armed men took her and her three children, while her husband lay injured but conscious at the entrance to their house. Bat-Sheva Yahalomi managed to escape before being taken to the Gaza Strip and returned to Nir Oz with her two daughters, aged 10 and one and a half. In the distance, she saw her son Eitan heading off into the unknown on his captors’ motorcycle. When she imagines the return of her husband, she says she hopes that he “is not a shadow of himself. But if sometimes I believe in his return, I am not sure that he is still alive.”