Israel – The Times of Israel, August 28, 2024
The Hostages Families Forum led a convoy of vehicles from Hostage Square in Tel Aviv to the Gaza border on Wednesday in a call for a hostage deal that would see their relatives released from Hamas captivity. They plan to call out to their loved ones early Thursday morning using loudspeakers mounted on a crane.
“The opportunity to bring everyone back is slipping away with each passing day,” the Forum said in a statement announcing the convoy.
The convoy, which arrived at the Kibbutz Be’eri amphitheater in the early hours of the evening, included trailers carrying some of the cars that were burnt and badly damaged during Hamas’s October 7 massacre. Terrorists murdered some 1,200 people that day, and took 251 hostages.
“What will be recorded in the history books of this cursed war is not whether we conquered the Philadelphi Corridor [in Gaza] or how many terrorists we killed, but whether we cared for and brought our hostages home,” said Shira Albag, mother of abducted soldier Liri Albag, before the convoy set off.
“Until now, our military operations have rescued eight hostages alive. In the first deal, 105 hostages were released. The latest rescue is a reminder of what can be done when we act with determination,” said hostage Eliya Cohen‘s fiancee, Ziv Abud.
Abud and the other families hope to call out to their relatives from across the Gaza border using loudspeakers in the hopes that they will be able to hear them.
