Hamas released a video of Gaza hostage Guy Gilboa-Dalal, who can be seen hugging hostage Alon Ohel, on its Telegram channel on Friday.
“Time is running out,” the terrorist group wrote.
In the video, Gilboa-Dalal said that he could not believe that he was still alive after 22 months of war, and that he was being held in Gaza City.
He also said that he and the remaining hostages would stay in Gaza City during the upcoming IDF operation, and that Hamas plans to situate them wherever the army operates.
Notably, N12’s news site reported on Tuesday that prior to Hamas’s military spokesperson Abu Obeida’s death, he was planning to try to prevent the IDF’s invasion of Gaza City by implementing psychological terror involving the hostages.
Gilboa-Dalal said in the video that the date was August 28, indicating that the footage of him may have been filmed just days before Obeida was killed.
IDF lacks precise knowledge of hostages’ whereabouts
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum said in a sharply worded statement on Friday that the IDF has no precise information on the location of the hostages. It added that the Gaza operation could lead to the captives’ “murder and eternal disappearance in the Gaza Strip’s ruins.”
“This action poses an immediate and direct danger to our loved ones, who have been languishing in Hamas’s tunnels for 700 days,” the statement read.
“Sadly, we have not heard of any way to protect them, nor has any plan been presented to us that would ensure that the Gideon’s Chariots B operation will not become: ‘The murder of the six, part two,’” it added.
By this, the forum was referencing the incident in which the IDF found the bodies of six murdered hostages – Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Eden Yerushalmi, Carmel Gat, Almog Sarusi, Alexander Lobanov, and Ori Danino – in the tunnels beneath Rafah.
“Forty-eight of our loved ones are at risk of being murdered and disappearing forever,” the forum said.
The families expressed outrage at the IDF Chief of Staff, Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir’s decision “to cooperate with continuing a pointless war.”
They added that Zamir himself believes achievements can be reached through means that do not endanger the hostages or soldiers further.
“What did not work in Gideon’s Chariots’ first phase will not work in its second or third one,” the forum went on to say, adding that there is a deal already on the table – the plan put forward by US envoy Steve Witkoff.
This, it said, could serve as the basis for a comprehensive agreement to bring all of the hostages home and end the war.
Lapid: Israel must return to negotiations
Opposition leader MK Yair Lapid wrote on X/Twitter that “the sign of life published this morning is yet another painful reminder that Israel must return to the negotiations table to bring back the hostages and to seal a deal.”
“We must do everything to bring them home. Sending strength to the families – you are not alone, we are with you,” he wrote.