ROB SCHMITZ, HOST:
A ceasefire is now in place between Israel and Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon. It is a major step toward ending nearly 14 months of war in the Middle East, but there is no such pause in violence in Gaza - at least not yet.
A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
It was a year ago this week that Israel and Hamas agreed to a brief ceasefire there. Hamas released 105 hostages captured on October 7 of last year. Israel, in exchange, freed 240 Palestinians imprisoned within its borders. Those seven hopeful days proved to be temporary.
SCHMITZ: We have two reports this morning - first, NPR's Scott Neuman in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD #1: (Singing in non-English language).
SCOTT NEUMAN, BYLINE: The large crowds that gather every Saturday night in front of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art are by now a familiar sight in the city. Hundreds of people have come here each week to a place now known as Hostages Square.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD #1: (Singing in non-English language).
NEUMAN: This protest song from the first Lebanon war in 1982 has become an anthem for the hostage families. Home, home, it says. It's time to come back from the mountains and the foreign fields. Twenty-six-year-old Maya Zeltzer has been visiting this place since the Hamas-led attack last year when militants breached a border fence and streamed into Israel. They killed nearly 1,200 people and seized 251 captives. As time goes on, she says...
MAYA ZELTZER: The pain only increases. And it's important always to go out to the streets and to show that we are here and we are fighting to bring them back. That's the only thing that matters.
NEUMAN: As part of a 2023 ceasefire deal, 105 hostages were freed in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. But that was a full year ago, and there has been no repeat of that deal. Meanwhile, the brutal war in Gaza has ground on, killing 44,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza health officials. Among the hostage families, many remain hopeful. Some fear the worst. Still, others, like Jon Polin, have seen their worst fears realized.
JON POLIN: We buried him on Day 332 of this struggle.
NEUMAN: Polin is the father of Hersh Goldberg-Polin. He was among 40 people abducted from a music festival not far from the Gaza border. In September, just days after Polin and his wife spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the couple learned that their son had been executed by his captors.
POLIN: The Israeli government and governments all over the world could have done more because there's a fact - many hostages have been killed in captivity, like my son, and 101 remain in captivity. It's a disgrace.
NEUMAN: That anger boiled over earlier this month during a speech by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the Knesset, Israel's parliament.
(CROSSTALK)
NEUMAN: Gilat Fisch is a member of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum that has popularized a simple slogan - bring them home now. Fisch hopes that her nephew, Sagui Dekel-Chen, might still be alive. Of those who continue to be held, Israel believes about a third of them are dead, but their bodies remain in Gaza. Fisch says that even the families of hostages known to have been killed are still demanding their return.
GILAT FISCH: They want to see their loved one get buried in Israel. So no, we're not going to dissolve one by one. We're going to stay as a group together till the end.
NEUMAN: I'm Scott Neuman, reporting from Tel Aviv.
KAT LONSDORF, BYLINE: And I'm Kat Lonsdorf in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, in a small village just outside of Ramallah...
WALIA: (Non-English language spoken).
LONSDORF: ...Where 37-year-old Walia (ph) sits on her couch in her living room, pulling up a video on her phone.
(SOUNDBITE OF SIRENS WAILING)
LONSDORF: The video was filmed this day last year when her then-16-year-old son, who was arrested several months earlier for throwing stones at Israeli soldiers, was released from Israeli prison as part of the hostage and prisoner exchange and limited ceasefire in Gaza. We're not using Walia's last name because she says she fears for her son's safety.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
WALIA: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Non-English language spoken).
LONSDORF: In the video, sirens wail as Walia grabs her son and hugs him tight and then holds his face between her hands, kissing him over and over again.
WALIA: (Non-English language spoken).
LONSDORF: "I was so happy that day. Unfortunately, that joy did not last," she says.
Walia's son was rearrested just seven months later.
WALIA: (Non-English language spoken).
LONSDORF: He's been in administrative detention, with no charges for months now - an ambiguous situation that can last indefinitely.
WALIA: (Non-English language spoken).
LONSDORF: She says they haven't been able to get a lawyer to her son or visit him at all.
WALIA: (Non-English language spoken).
LONSDORF: She says she worries about him a lot. Around 240 Palestinians were released during the ceasefire last year, mostly teenagers like Walia's son. At least 27 of them were later rearrested, according to Palestinian authorities. There are more than 10,000 Palestinians held for security reasons in Israeli jails, a number that has roughly doubled since the war began last October, according to human rights groups both in the West Bank and Israel.
OMAR ASSAF: (Non-English language spoken).
LONSDORF: Seventy-five-year-old Omar Assaf was arrested last October protesting the Gaza war in the streets of Ramallah. He was sentenced to six months in jail. Assaf is an activist. He's been arrested many times before. But he says this time was particularly bad.
ASSAF: (Non-English language spoken).
LONSDORF: "The cells were very overcrowded," he says.
They were given flimsy prison uniforms even in the coldest months.
"And the rations were not enough. Everyone was always hungry," he says.
Israel's prison service has defended its treatment of Palestinian prisoners and says they have a right to file a complaint if they feel otherwise. Assaf pulls up a video on his phone of the day he was released.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Singing in non-English language).
LONSDORF: In it, he hugs his family, and he has long white hair. His face is gaunt. He says he lost more than 60 pounds.
QADURA FARES: I call what's happened at 7 October until today - that it's a revenge war against the prisoners.
LONSDORF: Qadura Fares is the head of the Commission of Palestinian Detainees in the West Bank. He says before the war, Palestinian prisoners had gained some rights - radio, TV, books, clothes - to have a relatively comfortable life. But now that's all been lost. And he says they get frequent reports of beatings, humiliation and lack of medical treatment. But it's hard to get reports since getting lawyers into the prisons to meet with Palestinians has gotten significantly more difficult.
FARES: Very complicated procedure - it takes a lot of time, and the families is worry.
LONSDORF: He says he gets dozens of calls a day from families trying to find out any information. Fares says he had a moment of optimism this time last year, during the hostage and prisoner exchange, that maybe the situation would improve. But in the months since, with another Gaza ceasefire deal yet to be reached, that optimism has been hard to hold onto. Still, he says, he tries.
FARES: As Mahmoud Darwish, our famous poet, said - that we are growing up the hope - we have to do that.
LONSDORF: It's a shared sentiment, both in Israel and the Palestinian territories, as thousands of families of Israeli hostages and Palestinian detainees try to maintain hope that their loved ones will be released after more than a year of waiting.
Kat Lonsdorf, NPR News, Ramallah.
(SOUNDBITE OF LABRADFORD'S "UP TO PIZMO") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
