Updated February 27, 2025 at 08:40 AM ET
TEL AVIV, Israel — It doesn't look easy for Ilana Gritzewsky to remain composed while she recalls the violence and torment she was subjected to when Palestinian militants broke into her kibbutz in southern Israel, kidnapped her and held her hostage in Gaza for 55 days.
They broke her hip and other bones and burned her leg. They taunted her, saying she would have to marry one of her captors — and bear his children. As a Mexican-born Israeli, they said, she was not as valuable to them as hostages with U.S. citizenship.
It drove her to contemplate suicide while she was in captivity.
"I wanted to smash my head against the bathroom sink," Gritzewsky told Spanish-speaking journalists in a recent Zoom call.
But she didn't, because in her own mind, she knew the ordeal would end. Israel has a long record of doing whatever it takes — whether it's daring military rescues or giving up high-value prisoners — to bring imperiled citizens home.
"I never lost hope — that they would do everything to bring me back," says Gritzewsky, who was set free in a hostage-for-prisoner exchange in November 2023. "It's something that, if you lose it, you don't survive."
After Hamas killed almost 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostages in its Oct. 7, 2023, assault, Israel invaded the Gaza Strip and fought a devastating war during which it rescued only eight hostages in military operations and recovered the bodies of around 40 others.
During a brief truce in November 2023, Hamas released 105 hostages in exchange for Israel freeing around 240 Palestinian detainees. And on Jan. 19, another ceasefire went into effect, with exchanges taking place every week, sometimes twice a week.
Wednesday night, the bodies of four dead Israeli hostages were traded for more than 600 Palestinian prisoners.
Under the first phase of the deal, which expires this weekend, Israel has said it will release around 1,900 Palestinians, including many serving multiple life sentences, in exchange for 33 Israeli hostages, some of them no longer alive.
Israel says 59 hostages remain in Gaza, only 27 of them believed to be alive.
Even Israelis who support the ceasefire deal have found it hard to watch people walk free after being convicted of involvement in mass shootings and suicide bombings around the country, going back decades.
"We're paying high prices — really high prices," says Gili Roman, brother of Yarden Roman-Gat, who was also kidnapped and released in November 2023. "But this is the Israeli ethos. This is how we care for each other."
The belief that Israeli captives should never be abandoned is rooted in both Jewish and Israeli history.
The negotiator
Gershon Baskin, a peace activist, has a framed letter on the wall he received from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanhayu in 2011. It acknowledges his efforts in winning the release that year of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, whom Hamas had taken hostage five years earlier.
The Israeli government did not officially communicate with Hamas, which it considers a terrorist organization. But Baskin used his contacts with Palestinians to create a backchannel.
Netanyahu's government at the time agreed to exchange Shalit for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners.
One of them was Yahya Sinwar, who went on to become the leader of Hamas in Gaza. Israel says he was one of the masterminds behind the October 2023 massacre in Israel. That triggered a war in Gaza that has killed more than 47,000 Palestinians, according to health authorities in Gaza, as well as hundreds of Israeli troops.
"I have no regrets about the Shalit deal," Baskin says when asked to reflect on it. "Shalit was saved."
The practice of lopsided exchanges goes back to the Middle East wars of the last century, when Arab and Israeli soldiers were swapped in POW exchanges at ratios of upwards of 10 to 1. More recently, Israeli soldiers and civilians captured by militant groups in Lebanon have also been freed for large groups of detainees.
In the conflict with Hamas, Israel has many prisoners it could use as bargaining chips. There are nearly 10,000 Palestinians in custody in Israel and the West Bank, many held without charge, according to the Israeli human rights group HaMoked.
That's not to say that Israel's government wants to do the deals in this way, says Baskin. "Believe me, the Israelis would love to do one for one."
But there are a couple of problems with the one-for-one model. It's long been a Palestinian goal to free as many of their prisoners in Israeli jails as possible — and the families of Israeli hostages want their captive loved ones out as fast as possible.
Israel's social contract
There's a social contract in Israel, which relies on a people's army: Sons and daughters are drafted and if they're captured, the government vows it will spare no effort to bring them back, whether through force or diplomacy.
But Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, onslaught stirred deep emotions here. It was the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. And it presented Israelis with a wrenching dilemma.
While opinion polls show that around 70% of Israelis favor the current ceasefire deal, many of those who oppose it worry it will incentivize future kidnappings by Palestinian militants.
Some government ministers say eliminating Hamas is the priority. And families rallying in the streets for a deal to bring their loved ones home have been smeared as disloyal, says Baskin.
"The issue of the hostages was politicized by Netanyahu and his propaganda machine in a way that many Israelis believe that if you make a deal with Hamas, you are supporting Hamas," he says.
"No greater commandment"
For many, the controversy over the hostages is as much about freeing them as it is about preserving one of Israel's core values.
Rabbi Donniel Hartman flips through a text by Maimonides, the medieval Jewish scholar, and translates a tract from the Hebrew original: "And there is no greater commandment than redeeming the hostages," because their lives are in danger, Hartman says, reading from the text.
Hartman is the president of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, which advocates for democracy and pluralism in Israel. He says Maimonides, who lived in Spain, was addressing a problem Jews have faced for more than 2,000 years, when Jews were kidnapped for extortion or forced conversion.
The precept in Judaism is called pidyon shvuyim, Hebrew for redemption of captives, and it's a key value of Israeli society, he says.
"It's a self-evident truth that we do not leave our people behind," he says.
"Human life, above all else"
While it may be self-evident to a lot of Israelis, some feel their government needs to be reminded.
A small group of protesters stands outside the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv. As night falls, the group gets larger, and they shout through megaphones: "Human life, above all else!"
There have been many protests like this in the past year, accusing the government of abandoning the hostages in Gaza in pursuit of other war objectives.
But some lawmakers on the right say their top concern is preventing future wars. One proposal in Israel's parliament, the Knesset, would make those convicted of terrorism subject to capital punishment — which was abolished in the 1950s for murder convictions.
Hartman says he understands the sentiment, but predicts it won't work.
"You could pass any law you want," he says. "At the end of the day, if they have somebody, we're going to pay the price."
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