Brussels - Gaza: Europe and the Arabs
The prisoner exchange process between Hamas and Israel began this morning as part of the seventh batch of the ceasefire agreement. European media outlets were interested in this matter and Belgian newspapers in Brussels said that the military spokesman for the Qassam Brigades, Abu Obeida, announced the names of the Israeli hostages who will be released, namely: Ilya Cohen, Omer Shem Tov, Omer Finkert, Tal Shoham, Avera Mengistu, and Hisham al-Sayed.

At the same time, Israel is preparing to release 602 Palestinian prisoners in its prisons, as this batch includes 50 prisoners sentenced to life, and 60 others serving long sentences.

The release also includes 41 prisoners released in the "Shalit" deal who were re-arrested by the army, in addition to 445 prisoners from the Gaza Strip who were arrested after October 7.

In fact, Hamas handed over two of the six hostages who will be released today to the Red Cross. They are two men, Avera Mengistu and Tal Shoham. Four more will follow later today.

Shoham and Mengistu were briefly placed on a stage in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip by masked, armed men. The two hostages then climbed into Red Cross vehicles. The convoy left Rafah. Shortly afterward, the IDF confirmed that the Red Cross had handed the two hostages over to the army.

Mengistu had been imprisoned in the Gaza Strip for more than a decade, having crossed the Gaza border on his own in September 2014, apparently due to mental illness. According to his family, he is psychologically unstable. Tal Shoham was kidnapped during a Hamas attack on October 7, 2023.

Israel also published a list of 602 Palestinian prisoners it will release in exchange for the Israeli hostages.

The family of Israeli hostage Sheri Bibas confirmed that the body handed over to Israel by Hamas on Friday was hers. "Sheri came home again last night," the family said in a statement. “After the identification process at the forensic institute, we received the news we were afraid of this morning: Sheri was killed in captivity and has now returned to her home with her sons, her husband, her sister and all her family members.”
“Despite our fears about their fate, we continued to hope to embrace them. Now we are in pain and our hearts are broken,” she continued. “We have been searching for certainty for sixteen months, and now that we have it, it does not provide any comfort.”
The Israeli military also confirmed that the body is indeed that of Sheri Bibas.
Hamas was supposed to hand over the remains of four Israeli hostages on Thursday, including 32-year-old Shiri Bibas. But Israeli forensic experts said Hamas had replaced her with another woman. The remains of Bibas’s two children, Ariel and Kfir, who were four years and eight months old at the time of their capture, were handed over to Israel on Thursday.
Hamas said her remains were mixed with other human remains after an Israeli airstrike on the place where she was being held.
The exchange sparked outrage in Israel and put renewed pressure on the fragile ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. Her body was finally handed over to Israel on Friday evening via the International Red Cross.

In other news, Swedish police arrested three men at the Israeli embassy in Stockholm on Friday. They are suspected of preparing to commit a violent crime, but police say it is too early to say whether the diplomatic mission was the target. According to European media in Brussels on Saturday, the Swedish TV4 channel, citing unnamed sources, reported that the men planned to attack the embassy. A police spokesman said he would not comment on a possible motive for the crime. Police said the arrests were made inside the diplomatic mission, not inside the building itself.

Swedish police increased security around Israeli and Jewish buildings in the country last year after a shooting near the Israeli embassy.