Alongside joy, for terror victims and their families, deal evokes fear and betrayal

On Tal Hartuv’s chest is a jagged scar, one of 18 stab wounds on her body from a brutal attack outside Jerusalem in 2010 that killed her friend. Next to the seven-centimeter (3-inch) mark rests a dog tag inscribed with the words “Our heart is captive in Gaza,” a popular symbol of support for a ceasefire deal exchanging Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners.

On Friday, as many were celebrating a deal between Israel and Hamas after two years of war, Hartuv read through the list of Palestinian prisoners set to be released and saw the name Iyad Hassan Hussein Fatafta. He was one of three men who tried to kill her and who were convicted of killing her friend Kristine Luken, an American who was visiting Israel as a tourist.

Survivors like Hartuv and families of those killed in attacks have faced a wrenching dilemma throughout the war: Should the killers of their loved ones go free, risking future attacks, or should hostages held in the Gaza Strip be left to their fate?

“I can feel thrilled and hopeful and joyful that our hostages are coming home,” said Hartuv, who changed her name as part of her rehabilitation. “But I can still feel angry, I can feel betrayed, I can feel hollow. They’re not mutually exclusive,” she said.

No one from the Israeli government reached out to let her know Fatafta would likely be released. She received the list from a journalist.

By Monday, Hamas is to begin releasing the remaining 48 Israeli hostages held in Gaza, around 20 of them believed to be alive. Israel will release around 2,000 Palestinians, including senior terrorists convicted of deadly attacks, as well as people convicted of lesser offenses and those held without charge under what is known as administrative detention.

‘We need to bring them back’

Twenty-two years ago, a suicide bomber blew up Bus 37 in the northern city of Haifa, killing 17 people, including nine children heading home from school.

Israel convicted five Palestinians of assisting the bomber. Three were released in 2011 as part of an exchange for Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier held in Gaza. A fourth was released during the last ceasefire, earlier this year.

For years, Yossi Zur, whose 17-year-old son, Asaf, was killed in the 2003 Haifa bombing, was a leader campaigning against releases, especially against the 2011 exchange, in which 1,027 Palestinian prisoners were released.

Zur remembers being heartbroken as buses were loaded with convicted terrorists leaving prison.

Those released in the Shalit deal included Yahya Sinwar, who went on to orchestrate the October 7, 2023, attack that triggered the war and in which some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were murdered. Sinwar became Hamas’s top leader before he was killed by Israeli troops last year.

“It was my failure that I did not manage to protect my son, and now I’m not managing to prevent his murderers from getting out of prison,” Zur said.

But when fellow activists reached out to him to protest the ceasefire exchanges in the current war, he declined.

“With the number of people that were taken on October 7, and with a range of ages, I just came to the conclusion that it’s not going to be worth the fight this time,” he said. “We need to bring them back.”

The worst hostage crisis Israel has faced

As well as murdering some 1,200 people, Hamas abducted 251 people of all ages, soldiers and civilians.

The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 66,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it had killed over 22,000 combatants in battle as of August and another 1,600 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 onslaught.

Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools and mosques.

Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip stands at 473.

In a previous ceasefire this year, Israel released nearly 1,800 Palestinians, including around 230 serving lengthy sentences for deadly attacks, in exchange for 25 living hostages and the bodies of eight others. Most prisoners convicted of deadly attacks were deported.

This time, Israel is expected to release around 250 prisoners serving long sentences as well as around 1,700 people arrested in Gaza during the past two years and held without charge.

After previous releases, joyful crowds welcomed them home, adding to the agony of the families of Israeli victims.

‘I want to try and make Israel a safer place’

Ron Kehrmann’s 17-year-old daughter Tal, a popular high school senior who loved singing and doodling, was also killed on Bus 37. He still cries whenever he thinks of her.

It feels better to focus on his activism, he says.

He remains staunchly opposed to the release of Palestinian prisoners, saying it’s about deterring attacks.

“I want to try and make Israel a safer place,” he said. The October 7 attack happened “because of the mistake of the government” in releasing terrorists for Shalit, he said.

“If a youngster knows that at one point, if he succeeds in killing the Israelis, he will be released, so why shouldn’t he do it?” said Kehrmann. “Israel needs to break the equation of releasing hostages via releasing terrorists.”

A decision to maintain empathy

Since receiving the news of her attacker’s impending release, Hartuv has felt herself sinking into feelings of anger and betrayal. When that happens, she said, she pulls up a photo of a hostage on her phone, or their anguished parents, and looks in their eyes.

“It doesn’t melt me, but it creates that room for empathy and reminds me there’s another side of the coin,” she said.

“That doesn’t dissipate my feeling of anger at the Israeli government, or their sloppiness in not even contacting me, or feelings of betrayal at Western governments who didn’t hold Hamas to account, but it does mollify my sense of injustice to some degree,” she said.

It’s the ability to go back and forth between those heartbreaking stories, holding space for both, that Hartuv wishes more people would emulate. She feels that Israeli discourse has been so fixated on the hostages that people who raise questions about the price of the deal have been pushed aside. She doesn’t want to stop the deal, but after the hostages return, she wants some recognition for the price Israel, and she in particular, had to pay, and for the fear that this could lead to more attacks.

“It would make the release of the hostages so much more magnificent if you understand how necessary this is for Israel, but also how difficult,” she said.