Hamas has announced it will release Yarden Bibas on Saturday, the Israeli father of a young family kidnapped to Gaza who have been one of the most enduring symbols of Israel’s hostages in the coastal strip.
The Hamas spokesperson Abu Obeida said on its Telegram channel that Bibas would be released with Keith Siegel, a joint US citizen, and Ofer Calderon, who also has French nationality.
The release of Bibas, whose wife, Shiri, and children, Ariel and Kfir, remain unaccounted for amid “grave concerns” over their wellbeing, represents a painful moment for the large numbers of Israelis and other supporters around the world who have long campaigned for the Bibas family’s release.
Video of Shiri Bibas holding on to her children as she was kidnapped by Hamas gunmen from the Nir Oz kibbutz became an enduring image of the 7 October 2023 attacks, with her son Kfir just 9 months old when he was abducted.
Earlier this week Israel demanded that Hamas clarify the condition of Shiri Bibas and her children after the Palestinian group released a breakdown, without providing names, of the numbers of hostages who were alive or dead in the group of 33 so-called humanitarian cases slated for release in the first phase of the ceasefire deal.
As the releases under the ceasefire deal have continued, it has become clear to Israelis that Shiri Bibas and her children should have been released in the first exchanges if they were still alive.
Under the agreement, living women and children were supposed to be freed first, stoking fears for the fate of the mother and her children who were abducted and held separately from Yarden.
Ariel and Kfir were the only children being held who were not released in a previous ceasefire deal in November 2023.
Hamas has claimed they were killed in an Israeli strike early in the war and released a video of Yarden in November 2023 after it said he had been informed of his family’s deaths. Israel has previously said it does not have intelligence confirming that claim, but last week the Israeli military’s spokesperson, R Adm Daniel Hagari, said there were “grave concerns” for the fate of Shiri and her two children.
Relatives of the Bibas family said in a statement: “We said then, and we say now: we hold on to hope and continue waiting for their return. We await clarity regarding their condition.”
Those concerns were underlined by reports earlier this week that relatives of eight of the 33 Israelis had been informed by Gal Hirsch, the lead Israeli official dealing with hostages and the missing, that Hamas’s claims that they were dead were in line with Israel’s intelligence assessment.
Yizhar Lifshitz, whose father, Oded Lifshitz, 84, is on the list of the initial 33 to be returned, told Ynet: “It’s not exactly data. It’s Hamas saying [the number of] ‘alive’, ‘released’ and ‘dead’.
“There’s a grave concern for his life after this last indication. The last sign of life for him was on day 25.”
The Bibas family have been a particular focus in Israel and abroad. Earlier this week, supporters asked people to wear orange, signifying the colour of the boys’ hair.
“The information we received is not good,” Jimmy Miller, a cousin of Shiri Bibas, told the Jewish News Service last week. “The army is afraid about the state in which they will be returned, but nothing is proven yet. They fear the information we had received a year ago is real, but we won’t know the truth until we see it with our own eyes.”
Even as Israelis have braced themselves for bad news about the Bibas family, supporters have clung to hope.
At a rally in Tel Aviv on Thursday, Leah Corry, 65, a special needs teacher who knows the children’s grandparents, told the Guardian: “My heart says they might be alive, but from a rational point of view, thinking logically, they aren’t with us any more. Because of their ages, because there has been no proof of life.
“If they were alive, everyone would want them to come out. I think the families know they are dead. There are no children coming out in the releases.”
Tal Sabbah, 37, an operations manager, said he had first heard reports more than a year ago that the Bibas children and their mother had been killed. Like Corry, he thought the release of adult male hostages was confirmation they would not be returned alive.
“It breaks my heart,” Sabbah said, particularly after becoming a father for the first time, but he said it was something he had accepted. “I think I’ve processed it already quite a long time ago.
“Now it is like the final confirmation. I think, as sad as it is, it is also an important piece of the puzzle, just to know.”
