TEL AVIV: The families of Israeli hostages held in Gaza are trapped in limbo, two days before the second prisoner exchange of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire, with many having relatives both on the list to be freed and those who aren’t.
Among them is Silvia Cunio, an Argentine-Israeli from the Nir Oz kibbutz community. She has two sons in captivity, one of whom was taken along with his partner Arbel Yehud.
She is on the list — but the Cunio brothers, David and Ariel, are not.
They are among the 91 hostages taken captive during Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack and still held in the Gaza Strip. Of that number, 34 are dead according to the Israeli military.
The ceasefire’s 42-day first phase began on Sunday with the release of three women hostages. A total of 33 captives are to be exchanged during the initial phase in return for around 1,900 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.
Standing in front of the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, Cunio demanded that the ceasefire deal continue beyond the first phase to completion so she could see her sons again.
“I came here to say that I continue to fight for my children... to demand that they stop the war and don’t stop fighting for my children,” she said, wearing a T-shirt with their image on it.
Cunio presented herself as an untrammelled optimist, saying that her sons “will come back in good health. That is my hope and it is what keeps me going.”
Whenever she appears on TV, Cunio addresses her sons directly, just in case they might hear her.
“David, my darling, Ariel... I am here, I am fighting, I am doing everything I can. We love you. Be strong. We are here waiting for you.”
Another hostage relative, Sharon Sharabi, has two brothers Eli and Yossi in Gaza. Eli is presumed alive. The Israeli military said early last year that Yossi was dead.
As a man over 50, Eli Sharabi is on the list of 33 to be freed, alongside women, children and hostages who are ill or injured. The release of the remaining 61 people taken by Palestinian militants is dependent on further negotiations.
“As far as we know, Eli is alive. We have not received any statement from the security forces or the (military) confirming that Eli is no longer alive. So we want to maintain this optimism and pray that we will see him on his feet very soon,” said Sharabi.
Moved by the possibility, he allowed himself to imagine a reunion between his nearly octogenarian mother and his brother.
Yet, within moments, anxiety intruded.
If his brother Eli returns, Sharon Sharabi will have to tell him that his wife and two daughters were killed on October 7, 2023, and that their brother Yossi died in captivity.
Yossi and Eli were taken captive from Beeri, a kibbutz community where Eli’s wife and teenage daughters were found dead in their home.
Itzik Horn, 72, also an Argentine-Israeli, has similar contrasting emotions. He hopes for the release of his son Yair, 46, who is on the list of 33 because of his diabetes.
But there is also the pain of his other son, Eitan, 38, remaining in Gaza.
“They cut me in half. This is an impossible situation. One son might be released, and the other one isn’t,” Horn said.
Eitan was visiting his older brother in Nir Oz on October 7, when militants took the two of them hostage.
The kibbutz, less than three kilometers (two miles) from the Gaza border, was hit extremely hard during the Hamas attack. More than 30 people were killed in Nir Oz and 70 taken hostage, with 25 still in the Gaza Strip.
Horn was angry, insisting that “everyone has to return, including the bodies.”
He admitted that dark humor helped him cope with the pain.
“Yair inherited his diabetes from me and he was always mad at me (for it). Now, if he’s freed first because of his illness, he’ll be able to thank me,” he joked.
Asked what he would do if, after the first phase of the ceasefire the war resumed, Horn said: “I’m going to burn the country down... because that’s like signing their death sentence.”

PARIS: A Paris court on Thursday sentenced a Pakistani man to 30 years in jail for attempting to murder two people outside the former offices of Charlie Hebdo in 2020 with a meat cleaver.
When he carried out the attack, 29-year-old Zaheer Mahmood wrongly believed the satirical newspaper was still based in the building, which was targeted by Islamists a decade ago for publishing cartoons lampooning the Prophet Muhammad.
In fact, Charlie Hebdo had moved in the wake of the storming of its offices by two Al-Qaeda-linked masked gunmen, who killed 12 people including eight of the paper’s editorial staff.
The killings in January 2015 shocked France and triggered a fierce debate about freedom of expression and religion, fueling an outpouring of sympathy in France expressed in a wave of “Je Suis Charlie” (“I Am Charlie“) solidarity.
Originally from rural Pakistan, Mahmood arrived in France illegally in the summer of 2019.
The court had earlier heard how Mahmood was influenced by radical Pakistani preacher Khadim Hussain Rizvi, who had called for the beheading of blasphemers.
Mahmood was convicted of attempted murder and terrorist conspiracy and he will be banned from France when his sentence is served.
The 2015 bloodshed, which included a separate but linked hostage-taking that claimed another four lives at a Jewish supermarket in eastern Paris, marked the start of a dark period for France.
In the years that followed extremists inspired by Al-Qaeda and the Daesh group repeatedly mounted attacks, setting the country on edge and inflaming religious tensions.
To mark the opening of the trial into the 2015 massacre, Charlie Hebdo republished its cartoons of Mohammed on September 2, 2020.
Later that month, urged by the extremist preacher to “avenge the Prophet,” Mahmood arrived in front of Charlie Hebdo’s former address.
Armed with a butcher’s cleaver, he gravely wounded two employees of the Premieres Lignes news agency.
Throughout the trial, his defense argued that his actions were the result of a profound disconnect he felt from France, given his upbringing in the fervently Muslim Pakistan countryside.
“In his head he had never left Pakistan,” Mahmood’s defense lawyer Alberic de Gayardon said on Wednesday, conceding that “each of his blows aimed to kill.”
“He does not speak French, he lives with Pakistanis, he works for Pakistanis,” Gayardon added.
Charlie Hebdo’s decision in 2020 to republish the Mohammed lampoons triggered a wave of angry demonstrations in Pakistan, where blasphemy is punishable by death.
Five other Pakistani men, some of whom were minors at the time, were on trial alongside Mahmood on terrorist conspiracy charges for having supported and encouraged his actions.
The French capital’s special court for minors handed Mahmood’s co-defendants sentences of between three and 12 years.
None of the six in the dock reacted to the verdict.
Both victims were present at the sentencing, but did not wish to comment on the trial’s outcome.
Earlier in the trial one of the two, alias Paul, told the court of the long rehabilitation he undertook after his near-death experience.
“It broke something within me,” the 37-year-old said.
Neither he nor the other victim, named only as Helene, 32, have accepted Mahmood’s pleas for forgiveness.
Mahmood’s lawyers have yet to indicate whether their client will appeal the verdict.