Israel braces for Gaza hostage release as crowds gather in Tel Aviv ahead of Donald Trump visit

Crowds of Israelis - dancing, singing and holding vigil - gathered Sunday in central Tel Aviv as they awaited the expected release of the remaining hostages held by Hamas and allied militants in Gaza, a key step toward ending the war and rebuilding the shattered Palestinian enclave.

Officials said the release would begin early Monday local time, ahead of a planned visit by President Donald Trump, whose administration helped broker a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas last week.

“This is an emotional evening, an evening of tears, an evening of joy because tomorrow, children will return to their border,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday in a video statement.

Hamas and other factions will first transfer the 20 hostages who are still alive to the International Committee of the Red Cross, possibly releasing them from multiple points inside the Gaza Strip, officials said.

The ICRC will then hand the hostages over to Israeli authorities, while “later in the day, we are expecting to receive the bodies of those who have been murdered in captivity,” an Israeli military official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity so he could freely discuss the sensitive details of the exchange.

Israel says there are 48 hostages who either died or were killed in captivity, with their remains buried at scattered locations across Gaza.

When Hamas-led militants attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, setting off the war, they killed about 1,200 people and abducted 251, dragging them back to the enclave as hostages. Most of them were freed during two brief ceasefires - including one in November 2023 and another earlier this year.

“A number of slain hostages are expected to be returned to us as early as tomorrow. We are not disclosing the number,” said Brig Gen Gal Hirsch, a reservist officer in the Israel Defence Forces and the government’s official hostage coordinator.

According to Shosh Bedrosian, a spokeswoman for the prime minister’s office, the bodies will be brought to the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute for identification.

But if not all of the remains are found or released by Hamas on Monday, an international task force including the US, Israel, Qatar, Egypt and Turkey will help locate the bodies, Mr Hirsch said.

“Where engineering activity is needed, we will allow in equipment or specialists if required,” he added.

Once the hostages are released, Israel is supposed to free around 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees, including 250 people who are serving life sentences. The other 1,700 are residents of Gaza who have been held for more than two years without charge, officials said.

Ms Bedrosian said that she expects that the Palestinian prisoners will “already by on buses” while the hostages are crossing into Israel. “Once the confirmation comes through, they have crossed into Israeli territory, those buses will start and they will begin their journey,” she said.

But late on Sunday, Hamas official Ghazi Hamad accused Israel of “manipulating prisoner lists and delaying progress,” as negotiations continued. Hamas has reportedly demanded that senior militants, including popular Palestinian political figure Marwan Barghouti, be released as part of the deal.

“We urge international pressure, particularly from Arab states, to restrain Netanyahu’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank,” Mr Hamad said in a statement.

“We are working with mediators to implement the agreement in full and are calling for close oversight of Israel’s conduct.”

Any snags in the deal’s implementation could embarrass Mr Trump, who is expected to meet hostage families and address the Knesset in Israel on Monday, before heading to Egypt to co-chair an international summit on Gaza with Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi in Sharm el-Sheikh.

“The president is extremely confident these hostages are going to come home. He’s actually flying to the Middle East later today so that he can welcome them in person,” Vice President JD Vance said in an interview on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”

The United States will help monitor the ceasefire, which went into effect on Friday, Vance and other US officials said. As part of the first phase of the agreement, Israel’s military withdrew from populated areas in Gaza, but remains in control of much of the territory.

“To my knowledge ... we haven’t seen violations within Gaza,” the Israeli military official said.

Humanitarian groups are also preparing for a significant ramp-up in aid to Gaza, whose population is in the grips of a deadly famine. At least 67,806 people have been killed by Israel’s military campaign, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says the majority of the dead are women and children.

Health officials say they expect the number to rise, as rescue workers begin the arduous task of retrieving the thousands of bodies they believe are still buried under the rubble.

In Israel, the families of the remaining hostages became a powerful political force, with many channelling their agony into calls for Mr Netanyahu’s government to bring their loved ones home and end the war.

On Sunday, Dani Miran, the father of 48-year-old hostage Omri Miran, said that after two years, he felt like he was “in the clouds.”

“I’m ready. I’ll hug him. I’ll be overwhelmed with emotion,” he said.

“I honestly don’t know what I’ll say to him.”

The umbrella group representing the families said Sunday that Tel Aviv’s “Hostages Square,” a public plaza where the hostages’ loved ones have often camped out for months, would be ready from midnight local time with live coverage of the captives coming home.

Noa Shinan, 47, said that she had come with her husband and three teenage children from Kiryat Tivon, a town in northern Israel. “The feeling is mixed,” she said.

“There’s restrained joy until it actually happens. There’s always fear in the background.”

© 2025 , The Washington Post