🎗️Lonny's War Update- October 315, 2023 - August 16, 2024 🎗️

  

🎗️Day 315 that 115 of our hostages in Hamas captivity
**There is nothing more important than getting them home! NOTHING!**

“I’ve never met them,

But I miss them. 

I’ve never met them,

but I think of them every second. 

I’ve never met them,

but they are my family. 

BRING THEM HOME NOW!!!”

The heroic operation by the IDF that freed and brought home Noa Argamani, Shlomi Ziv, Andrey Kozlov, and Almog Meir Jan is a heroic triumph.

Now, with the enormous joy all over Israel, the Israeli government must remember its commitment to bring back all 120 hostages still held by Hamas - the living for rehabilitation, the murdered for burial. We continue to call upon the international community to apply the necessary pressure on Hamas to accept the proposed deal and release the other 120 hostages held in captivity; every day there is a day too far.

#BringThemHomeNow #TurnTheHorrorIntoHope

There is no victory until all of the hostages are home!

‎אין נצחון עד שכל החטופים בבית

Red Alerts - Missile, Rocket, Drone (UAV - unmanned aerial vehicles), and Terror Attacks and Death Announcements

*12:25am - north - rockets Neve Ativ

*12:25am - north - hostile aircraft - Nimrod, Ein Kania, Masa'ada
*12:30am- north - hostile aircraft - Masa'ada, Odem

*3:30pm- south- barrage of at least five rockets was fired from the southern Gaza Strip at the border community of Nirim a short while ago. According to the IDF, one rocket was intercepted by the Iron Dome, while the others struck open areas. No injuries are reported.

*4:20pm- north -rockets - Shlomi

*5:20pm- north -hostile aircraft - Kela

*5:25pm- north -hostile aircraft- Sha’al, Kela   

Hostage Updates 

• Officials marked progress toward a ceasefire-hostage deal between Israel and Hamas during talks in Doha Thursday, which are set to resume for a second day on Friday, the Walla news site reports.

  The first day of negotiations, mediated by the US, Egypt, and Qatar, ended with “constructive discussions,” according to two unnamed US officials, who say certain progress was made.

  Other officials, with knowledge of the talks, say that the decision to continue negotiating for a second day showed that the two sides are serious about reaching a deal.

• A joint statement from Egypt, Qatar and the United States says that the US has presented a Gaza ceasefire proposal that closes the remaining gaps between Israel and Hamas. It says senior officials from the mediating countries will reconvene by the end of the week to work to finalize a deal.

  The statement comes out after negotiators met in Doha on Thursday and Friday in the latest round of ceasefire talks.

  “Over the last 48 hours in Doha, senior officials from our governments have engaged in intensive talks as mediators aiming to conclude the agreement for a ceasefire and release of hostages and detainees. These talks were serious and constructive and were conducted in a positive atmosphere,” the joint statement begins.

  “Earlier today in Doha, the United States with support from Egypt and Qatar, presented to both parties a bridging proposal that is consistent with the principles laid out by President Biden on May 31, 2024 and Security Council Resolution No. 2735. This proposal builds on areas of agreement over the past week, and bridges remaining gaps in the manner that allows for a swift implementation of the deal,” the statement says.

  “Working teams will continue technical work over the coming days on the details of implementation, including arrangements to implement the agreement’s extensive humanitarian provisions, as well as specifics relating to hostages and detainees,” it continues.

  “Senior officials from our governments will reconvene in Cairo before the end of next week with the aim to conclude the deal under the terms put forward today. As the leaders of the three countries stated last week, ‘There is no further time to waste nor excuses from any party for further delay,'” the statement adds.

  
  

• An Israeli official involved in the hostage talks tells Channel 13 that progress was made during the two-day hostage talk summit in Doha that just wrapped up. However, gaps remain regarding Israel’s presence in the Netzarim and Philadelphi corridors.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu added new demands last month for Israel to keep its forces in those areas to prevent armed fighters from returning to northern Gaza and to prevent weapons smuggling from Egypt into the Strip.



Relatives of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza and supporters hold a protest march calling for a hostage deal, in Tel Aviv, August 15, 2024. (Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90)





• Senior Hamas official to Reuters: We were updated on the summit results, they do not align with what was agreed on July 2

  Despite the optimistic statement published by the mediators, a senior Hamas official told Reuters news agency that the terrorist organization was updated on the results of the talks at the Doha summit - and claims that these "are not committed" to what was agreed with Hamas on July 2.  ---We shouldn't read a lot into statements by either Hamas or Israel at this time while negotiations are ongoing. They are all part of the negotiation process.

Gaza 

• IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi dismissed claims by National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir that the military has orders not to respond to Palestinian rock throwers in the West Bank, according to leaked comments from a security cabinet meeting reported by the Ynet news site.

  “I feel that there is abandonment in the West Bank. Officers are telling me that there is a policy — mainly when forces are traveling through cities, and [Palestinians] throw rocks and Molotov cocktails at them — for soldiers not to respond,” Ben Gvir reportedly said at the meeting. “How can there be an order like this?”

  “There’s an order like that? Who told you? Officers? Their commander is sitting in front of you,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded, according to the report, referring to Halevi.

  “On the matter of the West Bank, any time there is suspected terror activity or rioting, we act. There is no order not to take care of rioting incidents. Nobody in the IDF accepts incidents like that. We have rules of engagement — it serves us for everything we need in an excellent way,” Halevi responded, according to the report, adding that wherever there is an incident where Israelis are traveling, troops are instructed to respond.

•   The United Nations asks for breaks in the fighting in Gaza for seven days to vaccinate more than 640,000 children against polio, which has been discovered in the territory’s wastewater.

  UN agencies want to provide novel oral polio vaccine type 2 (nOPV2) to children under 10 starting later this month, the World Health Organization (WHO) says. “Without the humanitarian pauses, the delivery of the campaign will not be possible,” it adds.

• After evacuation call: Gazans report tanks in Deir al-Balah

  Residents in Deir al-Balah, where the IDF has not yet maneuvered, reported to Reuters news agency about heavy shelling and tanks that crossed the security fence into the city. According to reports, the tanks crossed Salah al-Din Road and were positioned at the Abu Holi checkpoint that separates Deir al-Balah from Khan Younis, alongside intense and concentrated artillery fire. However, for now, it appears that this is IDF activity only on the outskirts of Deir al-Balah, as has happened before, and not a maneuver into the city itself.

  
  Evacuees from Deir al-Balah after IDF announcement

Northern Israel - Lebanon/Hizbollah/Syria

• Hezbollah won’t retaliate against Israel for the killing of a top commander while ceasefire-hostage deal talks take place in Qatar in order not to sabotage chances for an agreement, an unnamed source with close ties to Hezbollah tells The Washington Post.

  “We can say that Hezbollah will not launch its retaliation operation during the Qatar talks because the party does not want to be held accountable for obstructing the talks or a potential deal,” the source says. “The retaliation can wait; it is not urgent or has a time limit.”

  Hezbollah has vowed revenge for Israel’s killing of its top military commander, Fuad Shukr, in Beirut last month.

• IDF drone strike targets Hezbollah operatives in southern Lebanon; surveillance drone crashes in northern town

A group of Hezbollah operatives spotted at a building used by the terror group in southern Lebanon’s Aitaroun were targeted in a drone strike earlier today, the IDF says.

It adds that it has also shelled areas near Blida and Kafr Kila with artillery.

Hezbollah, meanwhile, announces the death of a member in an Israeli strike, bringing the terror group’s toll since October to at least 411.

Separately, a Hezbollah surveillance drone crashed in the northern town of Beit Jann this morning. The IDF says it is investigating the incident. 

 

 

• The Hezbollah terror group releases a propaganda video showing an underground facility, apparently in Lebanon, used to store and launch precision missiles.  It says the facility is called Imad 4.

  The highly edited video shows missiles inside the underground facility and launching positions for the projectiles.

  The voice of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, boasting about the terror group’s missile capabilities, can also be heard in the video.  Hizbollah missile tunnel video  - Hamas for year dug tunnels while the security establishment and the Prime Minister knew and ignored it as they never anticipated the need for us to return to fight with boots on the ground in Gaza. As long as they found, sealed and destroyed any tunnels leading into Israel, they were fine with the tunnels. They have also known that Hizbollah has been digging tunnels for many years. A few years ago, following pressure by a civilian tunnel expert, the then Chief of General Staff, Gadi Eisencott gave orders to search for and destroy any tunnels and tunnel entrances that led from Lebanon into Israel, which they did. They found some very significant tunnels but they were limited with what they could do. They could only deal with the parts of the tunnels that were found in Israel. The big unknown was the extent of the Hizbollah tunnels in Lebanon and perhaps in Syrian which we know nothing about. Since the early part of this war and the discoveries of the major tunnel infrastructure in Gaza, which was sorely underestimated by our intelligence services. I have been saying that the Gaza tunnels are probably at a kindergarten level in comparison to what Hizbollah has been able to dig for all these years undisturbed. Yes, this video is obviously propaganda, but that doesn't mean it's not true. I fear that the tunnel in the video is just a small sampling of that Hizbollah.

• Hezbollah associate: "We won't attack Israel during talks in Qatar"

  The Washington Post quoted a source with close ties to Hezbollah, who claimed that "Hezbollah will not carry out its response during the talks in Qatar. The organization does not want to be perceived as responsible for disrupting the talks or a potential agreement," he said. According to him, "The response can wait - it's not urgent or time-sensitive."

  Ronen Bergman revealed on ynet that in a conversation between the Prime Minister of Qatar and Iran, he made it clear that Tehran or Hezbollah should carefully consider whether to attack Israel at this time. Shortly after, senior officials from mediating countries learned that contrary to Hezbollah's previous decision to attack Israel, it was decided for now to postpone the attack, regardless of who would carry it out, until the status of the talks - that is, the regional situation - becomes clearer.

West Bank and Jerusalem and Terror attacks within Israel

•     A Palestinian man in his early 20s was shot and killed during a settler rampage of the northern West Bank village of Jit earlier tonight, the Palestinian Authority health ministry says.

  It is unclear who shot the Palestinian.

  
  
  

  Some 50 masked settlers participated in the rampage, torching at least four homes and six vehicles.

  An Israeli official says Border Police and the IDF arrived and cleared them out, and no settlers are currently in the town.

  There are no reports of any arrests. video of the fires

  New security camera footage shows settlers from last night’s rampage dousing a couch on the balcony of a home with lighter fluid before lighting it on fire and fleeing as the rest of the home in the Palestinian village of Jit appears to be set ablaze.

  Another clip shows the settlers torching a vehicle on the outskirts of the village. Additionall video of settler violence

  Hebrew media reports that the lone suspect arrested after last night’s settler rampage in the Palestinian village of Jit has been released.

  Moreover, reports say he wasn’t even arrested on suspicion of involvement in the riot itself, but rather for obstructing the work of Border Police who were operating in the nearby illegal Israeli outpost of Havat Gilad.

  Settlers who carry out attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank are rarely, if ever charged, with convictions in such cases even less common.

• The Palestinian Authority’s Foreign Ministry describes an extremist settler attack on Palestinians in a West Bank village as “organized state terrorism.”

  The PA health ministry says one person died of gunshots fired by settlers and another was seriously wounded during the unrest — which Israeli leaders condemned — on Thursday night in Jit, in the northern West Bank.

  Israeli security sources said it was unclear who had shot the Palestinians. 

• The White House condemns the latest Israeli settler rampage in the West Bank and knocks Israeli authorities for routinely not intervening in time to prevent violence against Palestinians.

“Attacks by violent settlers against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank are unacceptable and must stop,” says a National Security Council spokesperson in a statement to The Times of Israel.

“Israeli authorities must take measures to protect all communities from harm. This includes intervening to stop such violence and holding all perpetrators of such violence to account,” the spokesperson adds in a statement.

Dozens of masked settlers participated in the riot through the northern West Bank village of Jit, with the Palestinian Authority health ministry reporting that a 23-year-old local was killed by “settlers’ bullets.” Israeli security sources said it was unclear who shot him.

The IDF announced it managed to detain one suspect in connection to the riot, which according to the Yesh Din rights group included the torching of at least four homes and six cars in Jit.

Indictments in such cases are rare and convictions even more so, in what has led the US and other Western countries to begin sanctioning Israeli settler extremists earlier this year. Link The Netanyahu governments have never taken a strong hand against settler violence  and this extremist government has a police minister who has instructed the police not to do anything and he, along with the extremist Finance Minister actively encourage this violence with both having histories of the same types of crimes  

• Haaretz reports that some 100 Palestinians have left their homes in the Jordan Valley hamlet of Umm Jamal due to repeated threats and harassment from nearby settlers.
  Settlers repeatedly broke into their homes, threw stones at them and drove away their flock, residents of the Bedouin community tell Haaretz, adding that their pleas for the IDF or police to intervene went unanswered.

  The lack of trust in Israeli security services is what led to the decision to flee the area, Haaretz says.

  “The children are crying and afraid, and so are the women. It is better to leave than to have our house destroyed,” one resident tells Haaretz.

  The residents are moving to the nearby Palestinian village of Tayasir, which is under the civil jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority in the hopes that they will be safer there. 

Politics and the War (general news)

•  In apparent preparations for a potential strike in Iran, the Israeli Air Force yesterday conducted a long-range refueling exercise.

  In a statement, the IDF says the drill “simulated a long-range flight deep in enemy territory, while conducting aerial refueling several times in short periods.”

  The drill was carried out over Israeli airspace, and involved one of the IAF’s Boeing 707 refueling planes, and several F-35i and F-15 fighter jets.

  
  An IAF Boeing 707 refueling plane and several F-35 and F-15 fighter jets carry out a drill just off the coast of Israel, August 15, 2024. (Israel Defense Forces)
  
  

  Israel has been on high alert amid an anticipated attack from Iran and its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah, and has warned that it will respond if such an attack is carried out.

The Region and the World

•    The U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) announced that in the last 24 hours, it destroyed a ground control station of the Houthis in Yemen, in an area of the country controlled by the Iranian-backed militia.

Personal Stories

"Optimism is over": What's happening at the Hostages Square

"People are looking to identify, they want a festival": Once Friday was busy and full of events and live broadcasts. Today, traffic on Fridays in the Hostages Square is very sparse - and only the families and the "devoted" are still there, clinging to hope. "There's a decline and it represents the despair of the whole country," says one of the regular visitors, "This is my house of prayer"

"Another year goes by. I'm celebrating my birthday and they're not," says Iris Dahan, who chose to mark the beginning of her 54th birthday, of all places in the world, at the Hostages Square in Tel Aviv. "Everyone was asleep so I said 'Okay, I'll be quiet and go for a walk in Tel Aviv'. And when I got to Rothschild I told myself it's close somewhere around here, and I started walking," says Dahan, a teacher from the settlement of Shimshit on the edge of the Jezreel Valley, who arrived with her family of 8 for a weekend in Tel Aviv just after the count from the start of the war passed 300 days.

It was Friday, just after eight in the morning, and the square was empty. "It's important to connect to this place, even though we continue our lives, coming to relax and celebrate, but we can't forget them, move on," she explains. In this silence, she also found an opportunity to connect with one specific hostage who was engraved on her heart, a former student Ofir Tzarfati who was murdered at the Nova festival: his body was kidnapped and then returned to Israel in a military operation in December.

"Ofir was a funny kid full of humor who loved to play tennis. I was his teacher in 3rd-4th grade. A very charming and friendly child and also a good student."

Dahan says this is already her second visit to the square. "Then a few months ago there were many more exhibits that shocked and left a very deep impression, and they are not here today. I don't see them. At least there are other exhibits. It's suddenly empty and it's hard that it's empty. On one hand I can walk around quietly by myself, but it's hard to see this, it's become part of the routine unfortunately." Dahan noted that her family was worried about coming to Tel Aviv at all in the shadow of the security threat, which led to the cancellation of the protest on Kaplan that Saturday night.

Something is fading in the square

This wasn't a regular Friday: hours earlier marked 300 days since October 7th, in the shadow of the maddening wait for an Iranian attack and the heat wave - and the hope for medals in Paris that materialized that weekend. On Thursday evening the square hosted a large, sad and angry rally. On Friday morning the place was empty: one of the staff members of Beit Ariela, the municipal library adjacent to the square, says that just a few months earlier at this hour the square was already crowded with people - people from all over the country who came to identify or just curious. It was one of the most prominent points of interest in Israel for months, a must-see site. But as of eight-thirty only Dahan is registered in the visitor log. It's hard to ignore that something is fading.

Another staff member who has been following what's happening for months claims that "people want to identify, but if there's no festival it's hard to bring them again." The "festival" he's talking about is the variety of activities the place hosted every Friday: some of the best artists in the country would come to perform and Galei Tzahal even initiated a special broadcast that was transmitted live from the square. About two months ago that stopped too. Most of the organizations and exhibits that filled the place disappeared as if they never existed, and the strongest day of the week's activities shrunk to only three events: group yoga organized by relatives of the hostage Carmel Gat, a weekly event of "Hadar's Order" for Hadar Goldin - and Kabbalat Shabbat. Until recently there were several Kabbalat Shabbats in the square that even ran in parallel to the point of cacophony, and now only the one organized by Kibbutz Nachal Oz remains.

"These are the occasional people, this is who came on her birthday and this is who came for the first time today, and she'll also tell you that she can't believe others don't come," says Shay Dickman, Carmel Gat's cousin, who is already in the midst of preparations for the weekly yoga. "On the other hand there are the regulars you see here week after week, and there are the volunteers you see here day by day."

"They feel like it happened to their family"

Dickman says this encounter with the occasional visitors is for her a way to get out of the bubble the situation has imposed on her: "Someone approached me and said 'But how do you know she's alive? I think they're all dead already'. I was shocked and this was the first swallow, and suddenly I heard it from more sources. Suddenly all at once some message or something like that passed that the hostages are no longer alive, and then we started receiving videos of living hostages and people regained the clear knowledge that they are alive and there is someone to fight for."

"But many times those who come here in the morning appear out of a feeling that they need to be here, and through them I get the feeling of what's happening in the nation: I think everyone in this country feels that this thing belongs to them, that it happened to their people, to their family in a sense. They feel they need to be part of it. This is the place to express that you are part of it, this is your place, to support those going through this difficult thing that you wish would end."

And on a day like this, when traffic in the square is probably the sparsest since October 7th, those who have already become "devoted to the cause" stand out even more, ordinary Israelis who despite having no connection - familial or otherwise - to any of the hostages, have made this square and the families in it part of their daily routine.

"We currently can't do anything else right now. I can't enter Gaza. I can only make the voice of those who are not here heard," says Liat Meir from the settlement of Tzur Moshe.

"It doesn't matter at all if it helps"

Liat came to the square already at the beginning of the war and since then has persisted in continuing to come every Friday. "I decided that from that week I'm joining, both because I love yoga and because it's important. The families at some point find themselves here after ten months a little alone and a little neglected, a little less heard. Personally this is what I want to give, both my support and also to tell them 'I'm here' and it doesn't matter at all if it helps or not. People don't understand that we're not doing this for it to help, we're doing it to support."

Is this at the expense of other things?

"For me there's no giving up. For me it's part of my schedule, on Friday morning I'm here and around that the rest of the schedule is built in order to be here at 8 in the morning," Meir replies and her friend Mali Philos asks to add: "This is like my house of prayer. This is my synagogue. They know that no one turns to me before that. And this thing comes before all the errands and all the Friday matters. Philos, by the way, is from Tel Aviv. She and Meir, who comes from the heart of the rural area of the Sharon, met here for the first time and became friends.

"I scrolled back on Facebook to see how many we were here in the period of January-February," adds Meir. "In the whole square there were mats - from the stage to the tables. Clearly there's a decline and it represents the despair of the whole country. Yesterday I put stickers with the number 300 on all the people around me, and there are people who asked 'What's 300?' It's really scary."

From "Four Mothers" to the families of the hostages

In the last row of yoga practitioners at the entrance of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, one thin and definitely not young woman stands out, fitting in well with the young group of practitioners around her. "At first I would come and take a chair, I found a hidden corner and started doing yoga, and again a hidden corner and again - and now I'm already doing full yoga," she says as those present begin to disperse. The woman who began to fall in love with yoga is Orna Shimoni, a member of Kibbutz Ashdot Yaakov Meuchad who 27 years ago lost her son Eyal in battle in Lebanon. A few months before her son's fall, when she was still worried as a mother, she joined three other mothers and together they became "Four Mothers", the famous protest movement that was one of the factors that led to the withdrawal from Lebanon.

Today, every Friday she wakes up at four in the morning and arrives by train from Beit She'an, straight to the square. And what does she, a veteran protest fox - who even these days stands with her friends at a junction in her area and distributes yellow ribbons to drivers - think about yoga, of all things yoga, as a protest practice? "It's a huge thing in its silence that touches the soul. It causes everyone to think not just about Carmel, but each about their hostage. And it's something I never connected to before - at our home Eyal (a house she built in her kibbutz in memory of her son - Y.C.) there's yoga and Feldenkrais and I always called them 'guru'. This is the first time I really see yoga."

Few know, but Shimoni began dealing with protest matters even earlier, for the prisoners and missing. "Eyal was 6 when the First Lebanon War broke out. There Yehuda Katz, Zacharia Baumel and Zvi Feldman were kidnapped, in the Battle of Sultan Yacoub. And I must say that then I was small and foolish: when Ron Arad was captured, I was still very young, three years after that I would secretly join the group of pilots who didn't stop promoting protest and started very special activities. Then there were Udi and Eldad (Goldwasser and Regev, respectively. Fell captive to Hezbollah in 2006 - Y.C.). Then there was a group of guys who studied with them at the Technion and had outstanding ideas, and gimmicks that couldn't be ignored. And then there was Gilad Shalit, and that was really the peak."

And finally Shimoni, now 83, wants to emphasize: "In 2000 Adi Avitan, Omar Sawaid and Benny Avraham were kidnapped, and there I made my first statement on the subject, that if we leave a soldier in battle then we'll leave the wounded too, the day after tomorrow we'll already lose in battle and in the end we'll lose the country."

Shimoni continues after yoga to the next event: the weekly gathering of "Hadar's Order", alongside Leah Goldin, who for a decade has been voicing the cry of her own family, alongside those of the Shaul, Mengistu and al-Sayed families. One of the protesters who has become a regular at Hadar's Order in recent years is Devorah Idan, mother of Tzachi Idan who was kidnapped from his home in Nachal Oz on October 7th. Now they, the two mothers, are sisters in sorrow.

"Trying to be optimistic really by force"

Since the outbreak of the war the "Order" has been moved to the square, and Goldin shows up every Friday and says the same things to the changing audience. When it seems that public interest is beginning to wane, who remains in the campaign is who was there even before all this started. Gil Elias, cousin of Avera Mengistu, is also one of the "devoted" who nevertheless came out of the house and stands out in his presence in the square this Friday. Given the lack of visitors, Goldin gave her speech this time to an organized group, in this case Jewish Scout members from all over the world who stood out especially in the empty square. A German television crew that showed up despite the heat also interviewed Goldin and recalled days when almost every corner of the square had a foreign correspondent with a microphone in hand.

It can no longer be ignored: if in the early days of the war it seemed that every other person on the street wore the famous dog tag of the struggle for the hostages or "made do" with the famous pin, in recent months the physical presence of the whole hostage issue in the Israeli public space has been decreasing. The souvenir stands at the corner of the square were one of the busiest attractions. Hila, Yael and Israelah, the three volunteer sellers who have been coming here for months, say that this was their topic of conversation this morning: "People got tired and obviously the heat affects and people are abroad," says Hila Elster who has been coming here every week since November. "But it's mainly fatigue of the material. The square was packed, there were lots of sales. And here, your eyes see, there's no one here. People's optimism is over, and mine personally too, unfortunately."

"I'm here precisely because I'm optimistic," says on the other hand her stand partner Israelah Sarlatzky. "I'm always optimistic, in general. I'm here because we need to keep this. I don't know what will happen in September, when all the volunteers from abroad and tourists will no longer be here." And Elster adds and corrects: "I'm optimistic about the State of Israel, we're here to stay. But regarding the hostage issue, I'm trying to be optimistic really by force. Part of the reason I'm here is to hold on to optimism."

"We arrived after everyone had already left"

The Bishperling family from Carmiel shows up at the stand: the only one we encountered from the morning. "I can understand why people are afraid to leave the house today, and also the decision to go out for the weekend anyway wasn't simple. But also the thought of coming here and not passing through the square first of all - it felt disrespectful to me and even cheeky," emphasizes Marganit, the mother of the family. "I really expected there to be many more people here. I expected it to be crowded. I expected it to be sad and difficult because I would see people here with whom I would experience the difficulty together. That we would meet families here and that it would be very-very difficult. But I didn't expect the difficulty to be seeing the place simply empty. There's a pinch in the heart in explaining to the girls why we're here, why this place is called 'Hostages Square' and also explaining how we're supposed to behave. But then we get here and see the time that has passed and left signs on everything, even on the exhibits. It looks like we came at the end of the event, we arrived after everyone had already left."

Another point in the square that is active continuously and with admirable persistence is the extremely cramped tent of Kibbutz Nachal Oz, which is preparing for the regular Kabbalat Shabbat. Next to it are several additional tents that have been placed there permanently, but most of them are closed most of the time. Only in Nachal Oz do they manage their tent like another branch in the farm, with a regular duty roster. This morning on the work schedule is Rachel Ferman, a former kibbutz member and now a resident of Givat Shapira in the Hefer Valley. She tells - like many volunteers - how this occupation has absorbed from her routine: "There's no Friday meal. On Friday afternoon we meet here and everyone who can from the family comes here. In the family they know that on Saturday whoever wants to eat schnitzel needs to drive me to the rally."

Yoav Shalhav, also a former member who the kibbutz never left, comes here from Kiryat Ono. He talks about political frictions, but ones that always ended with a smile: "We accept all of Israel. MK Tzvi Sukkot was here, whom no one can suspect me of agreeing with his views. He sat here about two months after the war, and there was a situation - some of the people around started talking against him politically and stopped them. Maybe it sounds a bit artificial to someone or not, I really feel this way, and I think most people here feel this way - when a group of youth from a settlement sits here, it's clear to us that we're not on the same side of politics. When you see the faces and the pictures or when Omri's father sits here - whom everyone already knows from TV with the white beard - it's different. It becomes personal."

Indeed, with Ferman and Shalhav sits, almost every day, Danny Miran. "I live in Yesod HaMa'ala and for ten months I've been here. I was only in Yesod HaMa'ala four times, so all the time I'm either here or at headquarters, or on TV or abroad." It wouldn't be far-fetched to say that Miran has more or less moved to live here: he is perhaps the most prominent figure among the families who come here regularly. And he is actually optimistic. "People come despite the heat, despite the vacation despite people traveling they chose to come and identify with us at such an hour. True that in the heat they don't come, but come to the Kabbalat Shabbat and it will be full here because there's an event, but for people to come just like this to be here in this heat, in this humidity - I myself wouldn't go out. 

"True, we would have liked more to come, but we also need to find the logic. There's no need to get excited about it."  link

Acronyms and Glossary

COGAT - Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories

ICC - International Criminal Court in the Hague

IJC - International Court of Justice in the Hague

MDA - Magen David Adom - Israel Ambulance Corp

PA - Palestinian Authority - President Mahmud Abbas, aka Abu Mazen

PMO- Prime Minister's Office

UAV - Unmanned Aerial vehicle, Drone. Could be used for surveillance and reconnaissance, or be weaponized with missiles or contain explosives for 'suicide' explosion mission

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