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00:00There is deep concern.
00:01This is the first time that hostages have emerged looking evidently wan, very frail.
00:09Keith Siegel seemed to have trouble actually walking or lifting his arm when he was instructed
00:14to wave from that stage at Gaza Port.
00:17There is concern.
00:18It's also probably worth mentioning, in his case, he has known to be in very bad, frail
00:23health for a long time.
00:25We know that one of the hostages released two weeks ago, Emily Damari, was aware of
00:30his condition and requested for him to be released in her place.
00:35Hamas refused that.
00:37We also know that at the time that his wife, who was kidnapped with him, when Aviva Siegel
00:43was released in November 2023, she described him in very poor health.
00:49She described having been given one pita bread a day to eat and cutting it in half
00:55and hiding the second half so that her husband would have something to eat.
01:00So there are major concerns for his health, but all three of these men released today
01:04appear to be in some medical stress.
01:06Yeah.
01:07And you mentioned Keith Siegel's wife, Aviva.
01:09She of course launched this high-profile campaign to try and get Keith and other hostages freed.
01:16That's right.
01:19She and their daughter, one of their children, Shir, have been almost ubiquitous, not only
01:26here in Israel in the public sphere, but in the United States.
01:30And it's interesting to see how families of Israeli hostages feeling that they've basically,
01:38in some ways, been forsaken by their own government.
01:41Those who had access to other governments, such as the Siegel family, where Keith was
01:46American-born, have really turned very actively, both to the Biden administration and now with
01:53intense contacts with the Trump administration, to help release.
01:56I would say the same is true for Franco-Israeli citizens who have felt supported and been,
02:03as we saw here, publicly supported by the French government in a way that the Israeli
02:08government has simply not managed to do or chosen not to do for the families of hostages
02:13here in place.
02:15Another family reunion that will be taking place soon.
02:19The French-Israeli Ofer Calderon, released earlier this Saturday.
02:23His son and daughter were released in November 2023.
02:27I'm expecting some very powerful moments between them when they finally get to embrace once again.
02:35Right.
02:36I'm not sure we're going to actually see those images or see them quickly.
02:40There has been a bit of a shift here in Israel.
02:44The first hostages, the images of them first encountering their families, these incredibly
02:51intimate scenes, you know, every whimper, every glance, these were broadcast and released
02:57by the Israel government press office that had cameras waiting for them in the rooms.
03:02That received quite a bit of public blowback in the end.
03:05And what we've seen more recently, certainly on Thursday, are photographs that have been
03:11authorized by the families, released several hours later in some kind of an edited format
03:17that the, at least the family members accept.
03:20I think it's important to remember, though, these hostages who are being freed are all
03:24adults.
03:25They're all Israeli citizens who have the right to privacy like anyone else.
03:30And over the last few days, the way this has been covered has begun to be perceived as
03:35a real invasion of privacy.
03:38So I think today, especially, we should expect at least a few hours of wait until we see
03:44those sorts of images.
03:47The other man released this Saturday, we should mention, Yarden Bibas, something of a cause
03:52célèbre.
03:57Very much.
03:58Yarden Bibas has become a cause célèbre.
04:01He's a 35-year-old man.
04:04He is married to Shiri and the father of Ariel, who today is five if he's alive, and Kfir,
04:12who was taken hostage when he was just eight and a half months old.
04:16The images of Shiri Bibas sobbing, struggling as she's dragged out of her home in a nightie,
04:25holding, clutching her two small babies to her chest, these images have really become
04:29iconic.
04:30I think not just in Israel, but around the world, there have been all kinds of kind of
04:35redheaded homages all over the world, especially on the birthdays of these two boys.
04:41And we really know nothing about their fate, though there is major, major concern across
04:45the board.
04:46Hamas announced that they were dead and that they had been killed by an Israeli airstrike
04:52more than a year ago, but there's been no news since.
04:55Okay.
04:56And the next test, Noga, it appears for Israel and Hamas will come tomorrow.
05:01Talks expected to resume on the next stage of the ceasefire.
05:04What details do you have on that?
05:07Well, we don't have a lot of details, but we do know from Steve Whitkoff, Donald Trump's
05:14Middle East envoy who was here until yesterday, that the Trump administration is holding firm
05:19and demands that those talks resume.
05:22Prime Minister Netanyahu and many of his top ministers have said, some explicitly,
05:28that there will not be a phase two, that Israel will not return to these negotiations and
05:34certainly not withdraw from Gaza.
05:36That would leave 65 Israeli hostages living and dead, all of them men, many of them young
05:42men, soldiers, conscripted soldiers stuck in Gaza for an indefinite future.
05:47And that has caused an uproar in Israel.
05:50But Prime Minister Netanyahu seems a lot more sensitive to the pressure put by the
05:55United States.
05:56In fact, he took his most recalcitrant ministers this week to meet with Steve Whitkoff in an
06:03effort, I think, to persuade the White House on the one hand that he's in real political
06:08trouble and these ministers to understand that the United States really and truly is
06:13demanding this next step.
06:16Netanyahu will be traveling to Washington tomorrow and is expected to meet with Donald
06:21Trump on Tuesday.
06:22And one of the big questions hanging in the air is, will Trump be considerate of Netanyahu's
06:28fears of losing power or will he say, as we have heard Steve Whitkoff already said, your
06:33political problems are your problems, not ours?