Names of the next four Israeli hostages to be released, are expected to be announced Friday, and Americans, Sagui Dekel-Chen of Connecticut, and Keith Siegel of North Carolina, might be among them.
Friday, January 24, 2025 4:45AM
Josh Einiger looks ahead to Friday, when names of the next four hostages to be released are expected be revealed.
As part of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, the names of four hostages are expected to be revealed on Friday, ahead of their release this weekend.
The searing, emotional reunions gave Israelis hope after so long.
Three hostages returned home last weekend after hundreds of days in captivity in Gaza. But at the ceasefire’s glacial pace, so many more families are still waiting.
“Please keep on fighting for the remaining 94 hostages who need to come home,” said Emily Damari’s mother Mandy Damari. “There are too many other families who are waiting to hug their loved ones or bring them back for a proper burial.
At President Donald Trump’s inauguration this week, family members of the seven Americans still in captivity, greeted Trump, though they have no idea how much longer it will take to get their loved ones back.
Long Island native Omer Neutra, and Itay Chen, whose family is from Brooklyn, both died on Oct. 7. Their parents have waited all this time just to bury their children.
“For us, that hope to reunite with Omer alive was lost, and it’s very painful but we still owe it to him to go through with this whole thing, bring him back and bring back all of the hostages,” said Neutra’s family. “That’s what he would have wanted.”
This first phase of the ceasefire is supposed to accompany the release of 33 hostages, in an agonizingly slow trickle.
Names of the next four to be released, should be announced Friday, and Americans, Sagui Dekel-Chen of Connecticut, and Keith Siegel of North Carolina, might be among them. They are the only Americans on the list of the first 33.
The 33 hostages are being released by Hamas in return for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners, being held in Israeli jails.
In two weeks, both parties will begin negotiating over the next group of hostages, as the world waits to see if the ceasefire holds.
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Names of the next four Israeli hostages to be released, are expected to be announced Friday, and Americans, Sagui Dekel-Chen of Connecticut, and Keith Siegel of North Carolina, might be among them.