Tel Aviv — American-Israeli dual national Keith Siegel was among three hostages released by militants in the war-torn Gaza Strip on Saturday, more than 15 months after they were taken captive by Hamas. Siegel was freed in Gaza City about two hours after Israelis Yarden Bibas and Ofer Calderon were released in the southern city of Khan Younis. The Israeli military confirmed Siegel’s transfer from militants to Red Cross personnel.
All three hostages were handed over first to the Red Cross in Gaza before being transferred to Israeli forces. Siegel appeared to have lost weight during his captivity, but he waved and smiled as Hamas militants prepared to hand him over to Red Cross staff.
Both handovers were conducted quickly Saturday and without the chaos seen during the previous, third prisoner exchange, which angered Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who delayed the corresponding Israeli release of Palestinian prisoners by several hours.
Dawoud Abu Alkas/REUTERS
Israel was expected to free about 90 more Palestinians from its prisons on Saturday in exchange for the release of the three hostages, as stipulated in the ceasefire agreement that took effect on January 19.
Keith Siegel is 1st American freed during new ceasefire
Originally from North Carolina, Siegel moved to Israel four decades ago. He was among seven American citizens taken as hostages into Gaza during Hamas’ Oct. 7 2023 terrorist attack, which saw militants kill around 1,200 people in southern Israel and take 251 others captive.
Israel’s military assault on Hamas in response has killed more than 47,400 people, according to the Palestinian territory’s Hamas-run Ministry of Health, left entire neighborhoods leveled and caused a humanitarian catastrophe by displacing virtually the entire enclave’s population and destroying its infrastructure.
It is believed that at least two of the six American hostages still held in Gaza are alive — Sagui Dekel-Chen, 35, who grew up in Bloomfield, Connecticut, and Edan Alexander, 19, from Tenafly, New Jersey. Four other Americans are believed to have been killed in captivity.
Siegel’s wife Aviva was also taken hostage by Hamas militants on Oct. 7, but was released in an earlier hostage and prisoner swap in November 2023.
Speaking to CBS News about a year after her release, Aviva Siegel said there were moments as Hamas militants forced her and her husband through tunnels under the Gaza Strip that they felt “sure we were going to die.”
Yarden Bibas, 35, is the husband of Shiri Bibas, who was taken from their kibbutz with her two young children Ariel and Kfir during the terrorist attack. Hamas claimed just weeks after the attack that Shiri and her two children were killed in an Israeli bombing in Gaza.
In a TV interview about a year later, then-Israeli government minister Benny Gantz indicated that officials knew what had happened to the Bibas family, but said he could not provide details. The fact that, under the terms of the ceasefire deal, Hamas has released women and children before male hostages, suggested the rest of Yarden Bibas’ family was indeed dead.
Reuters TV/REUTERS
Ofer Calderon, 54, was among five members of his family seized by Hamas militants from their kibbutz near the Gaza border on Oct. 7, 2023. His two children were released during the ceasefire in November of that year, but two of his cousins were killed.
What has the ceasefire accomplished and what comes next?
Hamas is expected to free a total of 33 Israeli hostages during the first, six-week phase of the ceasefire and hostage release deal, which took effect on January 19. After the release on Saturday, 18 have been freed so far. With each release of Israeli hostages, scores of Palestinians have been freed from Israeli prisons, with roughly 30 being set free for every hostage returned to Israel alive.
Phase one of the deal was to see all Israeli women, children and male hostages over the age of 50 released in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, in addition to a dramatically increased flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza and the partial withdrawal of Israeli forces from some areas of the territory.
On the 16th day of the ceasefire, which would be Monday, negotiations to establish the steps for the second phase are meant to begin, according to a draft of the agreement shared with CBS News by a senior Hamas official.
There have been a few moments where it appeared the fragile agreement could fall apart, including when hostage Arbel Yehoud was not released as Israel said she should have been in one of the first exchanges. Quick negotiations led to a resolution of the dispute, and Yehoud was among those freed by militants in Gaza in the third exchange on Thursday.
“Any deal that takes two or three months to end a war is a bad deal, because it can go off the rails at any point, and at any point either one of the sides can accuse the other of breaching,” Israeli analyst and former hostage negotiator Gershon Baskin told CBS News on Friday.
“We’ve already had mutual accusations of breach. Right now, both sides are interested in at least bringing this forward to the end of the 42 days” of phase one, Baskin said.
Baskin, who has extensive experience negotiating with Hamas, cautioned that “you couldn’t have the two parties further apart” ahead of the expected negotiations over the second phase of the deal.
“What we hear from the Israeli side is that they will not end the war or withdraw from Gaza, and what we hear from Hamas is that there is no deal unless it ends the war and brings about an Israeli withdrawal,” he said.
But Baskin added that the new Trump administration in the U.S. would likely play an integral role in determining how the negotiations actually go.
“I think it’s all on the shoulders of Trump,” Baskin told CBS News. “If Trump is determined that this will take place, Netanyahu cannot go against him. Netanyahu may try to create some kind of provocation, leading Hamas to breach the ceasefire, in which case Israel will say to the Americans, ‘They breached it and now we have to go back to war.’ If Trump says yes, then that’s the end. If Trump says ‘no, you can’t go back to war,’ then we will move into phase two.”
www.cbsnews.com