Live updates: Four female hostages released by Hamas return to Israel

Nick Beck
Reporting from Jerusalem

Unlike last weekend’s chaotic hostage-taking in Gaza, today’s events were highly choreographed by Hamas.

The four young women were shepherded from cars by masked gunmen onto a carefully set-up stage, where a Red Cross official had signed documents with a Hamas fighter moments earlier.

The hostages were seen wearing lanyards around their necks while holding laminated identification badges – as masked gunmen stood by them, each with their own nod to the programme.

There was a machine gun next to a platform with a table, chairs and flags. Bureaucracy and display of tablets for cameras.

As hundreds of Hamas fighters and Palestinian civilians look on, four Israeli women smile, hold hands and wave. Who knows what they were really thinking in this cauldron of emotions as their suffering was finally coming to an end.

Hamas — which gave each of the women documents and a bag of items to carry with them — hopes that the order of these calibrated images projects as well as power. The intended recipients of that message will be Palestinians hoping to one day run Gaza, and Prime Minister Netanyahu, who vowed to destroy the group after the Oct. 7 attacks.

For the Israelis, it is a huge relief that four more hostages are safe. Last week, many felt outraged that the first three women released were frivolously dismissed.

Today, with the wildly conflicted scenes, there will be outrage – but this time at the women’s public display in their final moments before being granted their freedom.