Hamas releases 12 Thai hostages as truce holds; Israel still waiting for its own ‘miracle’

HAMAS has released 12 Thai hostages seized during the deadliest attack in Israel’s history, Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin said on Nov 24.

He said Thai embassy officials were on their way to pick up the hostages, and that their names and other details would afterwards be released. He made the announcement via the social media platform X, formerly Twitter.

Israel, meanwhile, is eagerly awaiting what one official calls the “miracle” release on Nov 24 of women and children taken hostage by Hamas.

At least 13 Israeli women and child hostages were set to be released as a four-day ceasefire between Israeli and Hamas forces took hold in the Gaza Strip, the first respite in 48 days of conflict that has devastated the Palestinian enclave.

The hostages were expected to be released to the Red Cross and an Egyptian security delegation that travelled to Gaza on Nov 23, then brought out through Egypt for transfer to Israel, Egyptian security sources said.

Israel will release 39 Palestinian prisoners, among them 24 women and 15 teenagers, in the occupied West Bank, in exchange for the 13 hostages due to be freed from Gaza, a Palestinian official said.

The authorities in Tel Aviv are now gearing up for the complex task of helping those returning home from a nearly seven-week hostage ordeal that may have left them deeply traumatised.

Hamas stormed into southern Israel on Oct 7, killing about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, according to an Israeli count, and seizing about 240 hostages.

Israel has vowed to “crush” Hamas in response and unleashed a withering military campaign that Gaza’s Hamas government says has killed nearly 15,000 people in the coastal territory.

“We hope the picture will be beautiful at the end of the day,” Mr Ziv Agmon, legal adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told reporters, saying Israel would “follow the agreement” but could not speak for Hamas.

“With a terrorist organisation like Hamas, everything that happens in the coming days is a miracle,” he said.

Journalists saw Israeli tanks moving away from Gaza at the northern end as the truce took hold at 7 am (1 pm in Singapore) on Nov 24, and aid trucks rolling in from Egypt at the southern end.

There was no sound of Israeli air force activity above northern Gaza, nor any of the contrails typically left by Palestinian rocket fire.

Hamas confirmed on its Telegram channel that all hostilities from its forces would cease.

But the group’s spokesman Abu Ubaida for Hamas’ armed wing later referred to “this temporary truce” in a video message that called for an “escalation of the confrontation with (Israel) on all resistance fronts”, including the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where violence has surged since the Gaza war erupted almost seven weeks ago.

The Israeli military also said fighting would resume soon.

“This will be a short pause, at the conclusion of which the war (and) fighting will continue with great might and will generate pressure for the return of more hostages,” Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said.

Over the course of the four-day truce, at least 50 hostages are expected to be freed, with 150 Palestinian prisoners to be released in exchange.

Doctors would perform a “full physical examination” of every hostage, and they would be able to video call telephone family members in a conversation monitored by professionals.