•An Israeli Air Force CH-53 Sea Stallion military helicopter flies over as people gather with Israeli national flags
Israeli captives Gadi Moses, Arbel Yehud and Agam Berger are set to be released from Gaza today as part of the third hostage-prisoner swap between Israel and Hamas.
Palestinian militants are also set to free five Thai citizens being held hostage, but their identities are still unknown, reports AFP.
According to Israel, Yehud, as a woman and a civilian, should have been released last Saturday in the second exchange under the ceasefire deal that recently went into effect in the Gaza Strip.
When she did not appear, the Israeli government accused Hamas of violating the agreement, and in retaliation prevented hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians from returning to the north of Gaza.
On Monday, following Hamas’s pledge to release Yehud and the other hostages this week, the block was lifted.
Here is what we know about the three Israeli hostages.
Gadi Moses, 80
Gadi Moses, a farmer, lost his wife Efrat Katz, 69, in Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
The other members of his German-Israeli family who were abducted have since been released.
Moses, who turned 80 in captivity, had been trying to negotiate with the attackers to save his family when he was also taken hostage.
He appeared in a video released in December 2023 by the militant group Islamic Jihad alongside another hostage, Elad Katzir, 47, who has since been killed.
Arbel Yehud, 29
Family members speaking to our correspondent have described Arbel Yehud, who turned 29 in captivity, as a gentle young woman with a magnetic smile.
She was captured at the same time as her boyfriend Ariel Cunio, 26. Her brother Dolev, 35, was killed on October 7, 2023. All three lived in the Nir Oz kibbutz.
Yehud worked in the kibbutz’s education system before becoming a guide at the nearby GrooveTech centre dedicated to technology and space.
Yehud was hiding in the safe room at the home of David Cunio, Ariel’s brother. To force them out, the attackers set fire to the house.
Once free, she will meet for the first time her fourth nephew, after her brother Dolev’s wife gave birth to him while Yehud was in captivity.
When she was kidnapped, she had just returned from a long trip to Latin America with her partner, whom she had been with for five years.
Two male members of the family, Ariel and his brother David, are still in captivity.
Agam Berger, 20
Agam Berger, now 20, was abducted along with four other soldiers while doing her military service along the border with Gaza.
In a video published on the social network Telegram, she was seen being taken into a car in her pyjamas.
Agam Goldstein-Almog, a hostage freed during a week-long truce in November 2023, told her family that Berger, a practising Jew, respected the Sabbath during her detention, refusing on Saturdays to cook and clean for her captors.
She was also a source of comfort for the other hostages, and had plaited their hair.
Berger, who has a twin sister, has played the violin since childhood and comes from Holon, a Tel Aviv suburb.
