Hamas will release three Israelis, including two women and an 80-year-old man, as well as five Thai nationals during the next hostage release, set for Thursday, officials from Israel and Hamas said as a tenuous ceasefire between the sides moves ahead.
The officials named the Israeli women as Arbel Yehoud, 29, Agam Berger, 20, and the man as Gadi Moses, 80.
The officials, who spoke on Wednesday on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the media, said the hostages’ families had approved the publication of their names.
The identities of the Thai nationals were not immediately known.
A number of foreign workers were taken captive along with dozens of Israeli civilians and soldiers during Hamas’s October 7 2023 attack that set off the war in Gaza.
The expected release will keep up the momentum of the fragile ceasefire between Israel and the militant Hamas group that began earlier this month and which paused the 15-month war in Gaza.
As part of the deal, Hamas is releasing hostages in phases in exchange for freedom for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
The deal had been negotiated for months under the Biden administration but was finally sealed after US President Donald Trump threatened there would be “hell to pay” if the hostages were not returned.
Mr Trump’s Mideast envoy, Steve Witkoff, was in Israel on Wednesday and met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who heads to Washington next week to meet Mr Trump — the first foreign leader to meet the US president in his second term in office.
Thursday’s release was not originally scheduled but came as a result of a standoff between Israel and Hamas over the identities of the hostages released over the weekend.
Israel had demanded that Ms Yehoud, a civilian, be part of that group and when she was not freed, Israel held up the movement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians looking to return to what is left of their homes in the war-battered north of Gaza.
International mediation efforts brought about the additional release on Thursday and cleared the way for Palestinians to stream north.
Another release is slated for Saturday, which Mr Netanyahu’s office said would free male hostages.
Dozens of Palestinian prisoners are set to be freed both Thursday and Saturday.
A list of more than 100 Palestinian prisoners that Israel is set to release on Thursday in exchange for its three hostages includes Zakaria Zubeidi, a prominent former militant leader and theatre director whose dramatic jail escape in 2021 thrilled Palestinians and stunned the Israeli security establishment.
Zubeidi once led the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade — an armed group affiliated with Fatah, the secular political party that controls the Palestinian Authority — which carried out deadly attacks against Israelis during a Palestinian uprising between 2000 and 2005.
After the uprising, in 2006, Zubeidi established a theatre in his home town in the northern West Bank to promote what he described as cultural resistance to Israel. Even today, the Freedom Theatre in Jenin refugee camp puts on everything from Shakespeare and stand-up comedy to plays written by residents.
In 2019, after Zubeidi had already served years in prison for attacks in the early 2000s, Israel arrested him again over his alleged involvement in shooting attacks that targeted buses of Israeli settlers in the West Bank but caused no injuries.
Zubeidi has been awaiting trial in prison since. He denies the charges, insisting he focused on political activism as a member of Fatah and a prisoner advocacy group.
In 2021, he and five other prisoners tunnelled out of a maximum-security prison in northern Israel, an escape that helped solidify Zubeidi’s image among Palestinians as a folk hero. All six escapees were recaptured days later.
