Mona Kaskeen and her husband Khalil stayed awake all night on Monday, searching for one face in the rolling coverage from Israel and Gaza.
Finally, at 2.30am, a familiar face appeared on the other end of a video call — although one far more gaunt than the last time they’d seen it.
“I didn’t realise it was Ibrahim. He lost weight, too much. He lost his teeth,” said Mona, a neurosurgeon who came to Australia from Gaza with her family in March 2024 and is living in Sydney.
Ibrahim’s family says he lost a lot of weight during his two years in Israeli prison. Source: SBS News
“It was an overwhelming joy, praise be to God,” Khalil said, adding that Ibrahim’s first question to him was why he wasn’t waiting for him in Gaza.
“He asked me, ‘My God, why did you go to Australia?’ I think he wanted me to be there,” he said.
While Ibrahim is now back with his loved ones in Gaza, their house has been destroyed and the family is now living in a tent for the foreseeable future.
The United Nations has reported 78 per cent of the Gaza Strip’s buildings have been partially or fully destroyed by Israel’s two-year onslaught.
Ibrahim was among 2,000 Palestinians released by Israel this week. Source: Supplied
Ibrahim is one of nearly 2,000 Palestinians who have now been freed, including 1,700 seized from Gaza since October 2023 and held without charge.
Israeli human rights group B’Tselem reports that, as of December 2024, the Israel Prison Service was holding 9,619 Palestinians on what it defined as “security” grounds.
The release of the cohort that included Ibrahim was premised on the exchange of 20 living Israeli hostages and the remains of 28 others who died while in Hamas captivity.
Ahead of the release of the 20 living hostages on Monday, thousands of Sydney’s Jewish community members gathered at an event on Sunday night.
Members of Sydney’s Jewish community attended an official commemoration of the second anniversary of the October 7 attacks in Sydney on Sunday. This year, 7 October fell on the first day of the Jewish festival of Sukkot. Source: AAP / Sittixay Ditthavong
The next day, hundreds gathered in Melbourne’s east to watch their release broadcast live.
Justine Pearl, a Jewish community member who attended the gathering, told SBS Hebrew on Tuesday: “I feel like I’ve had a solid night’s sleep for the first time in two years.”
“I feel elated, exhausted, excited, nervous — all of the feelings, it’s a lot,” she said.
Naomi Levin, CEO of the Jewish Community Council of Victoria, said the community was greatly relieved.
“We’ve had two years of waiting, two years of praying, two years of having our hearts really on hold, while we’ve been waiting for all the hostages to come home,” she said.
“But maybe after today with the release of the hostages, it’s time for a new era and time for a new era of peace,” Levin said.
Khalil also hopes the ceasefire marks the beginning of a new chapter.
“God willing, it will be a real beginning for a comprehensive and lasting peace and the beginning of reconstruction and settling people, because we are tired,” he said.
“The Palestinian people have had enough … so I hope that it will be a comprehensive and honest deal, and that it will be carried out in the best possible way, with the support of the sponsoring countries.”
But strains in the partly agreed peace plan are already starting to show.
Hamas has accused Israel of violating the terms of the ceasefire after the Israeli military killed five Palestinians as they went to check on houses in a suburb east of Gaza City.
The Israeli military said it had fired on people who crossed truce lines and approached its forces after ignoring calls to turn back.
Israel has also accused Hamas of failing to fulfil its promise to return the remains of deceased hostages, threatening to halve the number of humanitarian aid trucks allowed into the famine-stricken enclave in response.
As of Wednesday, Hamas had handed over eight coffins of dead hostages, leaving at least 19 presumed dead and one unaccounted for.
Since Israel partially withdrew from Gaza, Hamas has deployed hundreds of security forces in the streets and executed several people they accused of collaborating with Israel.
Israeli officials have so far refrained from commenting publicly on the re-emergence of the group’s fighters.
— With additional reporting by Reuters and the Australian Associated Press
