Two tots who have become a symbol of Israel’s torturous struggle to deal with the fate of its kidnapped citizens — the red-headed Bibas boys — are scheduled to come home from Gaza with their mother a week from Sunday. 

Kfir Bibas was nine months old on October 7, 2023. His older brother, Ariel, was 4. An image of their frightened but determined mother, Shiri, holding on to the two boys as gun-toting terrorists dragged them into Gaza became iconic, a painful mark of the most traumatic day in Israel’s history.

Known as the Jinjim — Hebrew for ginger-haired — the boys will be released with their mother a week from Sunday, when three Israeli women are slated to be released at the launch of the first phase of a deal that the Israeli government approved officially on Friday.

The American-backed deal entails a 45-day Gaza cease-fire, during which 33 of the 98 remaining hostages are to be released. Two of the four American hostages who are presumed alive will be freed as part of that first phase. Two others, and three bodies held in Gaza, are slated to be included in the deal’s second phase. Negotiations on that phase will be launched on the 16th day of the current deal.  

An army of Israeli health professionals — medical doctors, psychiatrists, social workers — has been deployed to receive the released abductees, who are presumably trauma-stricken following 15 months in captivity. Some are injured; others will return in coffins and be buried. With their consent, the released women will undergo pregnancy tests. Intelligence professionals will also be at hand to gain information on the fate of other hostages. 

The Israeli government on Friday issued the complete list of the first 33 abductees to be freed, the majority of whom are presumed alive. Emily Damarai, Arbel Yehud, and Romi Gonen, who were removed to Gaza from the Super Nova dance festival, will be freed Sunday. The Bibas boys, their mother, and a fourth woman, Doron Steinbrecher, will follow a week after. 

The hostages have become a bleeding wound for Israel. In a recent visit to northern Israel’s Kfar Vradim, Hebrew for “village of roses,” the Sun saw a long wall decorated with roses, pictures, poems, and prayers for a local, Romi Gonen. She marked her 24th birthday last August in a Hamas tunnel.

Like other family members, Mirav Gonen became a passionate advocate for putting hostages on top of Israel’s war agenda. Her daughter is scheduled to be freed Sunday, but families have vowed that advocacy will continue until all 98 hostages, alive or dead, are out of Gaza.     

Following Sunday’s release, three hostages will be freed each week, including Americans Sagui Dekel-Chen and Keith Siegel. Two other Americans, Itay Chen and Edan Alexander, are not included in the list of 33 people to be released in the first phase. Nor are Judy and Gadi Haggai or Omer Neutra, who are known to have been murdered in captivity. Their bodies are being held in Gaza.

The list of the first 33 hostages to be released includes five women soldiers who have been kidnapped from a military post near the Gaza border. Also part of the first phase are 10 men between the ages of 50 and 75, and nine men under 50 who are injured or otherwise in bad health. 

Completing that list are two men who have been held for more than 10 years after they inadvertently crossed the border into Gaza: Hisham al Sayed and Ethiopia-born Avera Mengistu, a 39-year-old who has long suffered a mental illness. 

Israel also released a partial list of convicted Palestinian prisoners to be freed in the first phase, including 210 women and under-age prisoners who will be swapped for the Bibas boys and five Israeli women. For the five female Israeli soldiers, 250 prisoners will be released, 150 of whom were sentenced to life in prison. An additional 140 lifers and 330 other terrorists will also be released from prison.

Notably, 47 convicted terrorists who were let go in a previous such exchange but then rearrested will be freed in return for the two Israelis who have been held in Gaza for more than a decade. More than a 1,000 Palestinians who have been arrested since October 7, 2023, but were not part of that day’s atrocities are also on the list of those to be freed. 

The government issued names of terrorists involved in the lopsided swap to allow time for those who hope to block the deal in Jerusalem’s supreme court. The court is widely expected by Israelis to reject petitions by relatives of terrorism victims against freeing the killers. Had the government delayed publicly issuing the lists, the first exchange on Sunday would have been held up.  

After approving the deal, the government is eager to stick to the Sunday schedule. One reason is to avoid a clash with Monday’s inauguration festivities at Washington. President-elect Trump has threatened “hell to pay” if hostages are not freed by then.