Walk from the gates of Gaza to Jerusalem to call for the release of the hostages

The objective is to fill with life a road near the scenes of the Hamas massacre on October 7.

A hundred relatives and acquaintances of the more than 100 hostages who remain kidnapped in Gaza left on foot this Wednesday morning from the vicinity of the border with the Strip towards Jerusalem.

The four-day march is part of a new push against the Government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

They want Israel to prioritize an agreement with Hamas so that their loved ones can return home, ahead of military operations on Palestinian soil.

Gadi Moses will turn 80 on March 12.

On the 145th day of his captivity, his son Oded is one of those heading up Highway 232, which climbs north parallel to the fence separating Israel from the Palestinian enclave.

“We have to reach an agreement with the enemies because the hostages are only going to return through political means,” he understands.

On that asphalt on which they advance, the wounds of the Hamas attack are still visible, which killed around 1,200 people in this area and kidnapped 240.

That was the trigger for a war in which Israel, in retaliation, has already killed nearly 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza.

Oded, who walks with the image of his father printed on his black T-shirt, is convinced that the Israeli authorities have the capacity to stop the military operation, reach an agreement and then put an end to Hamas.

This is how, after 49 days, his mother, Margalit Moses, 77, who had been kidnapped like Gadi in the Nir Oz kibbutz, was released.

The parties agreed to a ceasefire that lasted the last week of November and saw the return of 105 hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons.

Now they are trying to achieve a second break in the war with negotiations for weeks.

Relatives of the more than 130 hostages who remain kidnapped in Gaza have today begun a four-day march from Reim, a place next to the border of the Strip where Hamas killed more than 200 people on October 7, to Jerusalem.Luis de Vega

The organizers of the march, who in November organized a similar one from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, have chosen as their starting point one of the scenes of the barbarity of October 7.

This is the place where the Nova festival was held, near Kibbutz Reim, and where Palestinian Islamists killed 360 people.

Hundreds of messages, photos, personal objects, candles, small altars, flowers, flags... remember the victims of the tragedy.

Some are part of the more than 134 hostages still in Gaza, although authorities estimate that around thirty are already dead.

“RIP Elia,” is written on the trunk of a tree next to a fractured red heart and the date of the massacre.

“United for the release of the hostages,” is the motto under which they will walk until Saturday, explains Ronen Neutra, father of Omer Neutra, one of those still kidnapped, before leaving.

Each day they will carry out a stage of between 15 and 20 kilometers.

It is a march for “hope” so that no one is left behind, “the living and the murdered,” he adds.

They understand that the entire cabinet led by Netanyahu is “responsible” for ensuring that this agreement includes everyone, indirectly referring to people of all ages and conditions, since military personnel were also captured.

Like Ronen, the vast majority of participants wear t-shirts or posters raised on wooden poles with the photo of their loved ones.

Ziv and Gali Berman, 26-year-old twins kidnapped from Kibbutz Kafar Azza, share one of those posters.

It is in the hands of Macabit Mayer, her aunt, who advances while she lifts them up so that they can see each other well.

“They have to be released in an agreement.

We fear that if the army goes to rescue them it would be dangerous,” she says in the company of her brother Nir Sobol.

So far only two civilians have been freed by the army in Gaza.

It was last February 12 in an unprecedented operation carried out in Rafah, in the south.

Some of the hostages previously lost their lives in liberation attempts that failed in other areas of the Strip.

Israeli troops also killed three of the kidnapped people while they were waving a white flag.

“We are hopeful that things are developing (by the Government) behind closed doors.

We must trust them, we have no choice,” says Macabit Mayer.

But there are sectors of the Government and Israeli society that, regardless of the kidnapped, defend an unrelenting military operation.

“I am family.

For me the only way is agreement.

We fear for their lives.

What I ask of others is to put themselves in my place.

My only answer is that they think it was their own family.

"His son, mother, father, grandmother..." explains the aunt of Ziv and Gali Berman, who at the end of November were fine, according to some of the hostages from their kibbutz who were released then.

Several police officers observe a panel with photos of the victims at the Nova festival before accompanying the departure of the hostages' relatives from the march.Luis de Vega

“The goal of all this is to achieve peace with the enemies.

We have to live with them,” defends Oded Moses.

“Years ago we were already at war with Egypt and Jordan and now we are more or less fine.

I think that is what we have to do with the Palestinians, although not with Hamas, which is a terrorist group and has nothing to do with the desire of the Palestinians to have a State,” he concludes.

Moses clings to optimism for his mother's release and to the video that the Palestinian Islamist group Islamic Jihad made public on December 19 in which his father appears along with another hostage denouncing the "unbearable" conditions of captivity and calling on Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders to act.

The group leaves in the direction of Sderot.

Saroo, 27, has no family in Gaza, but has set out to reach Jerusalem barefoot.

Hadar Norany, 39, also walks, accompanied by a poster with the photo of her friend and co-worker at a veterinary center Doron Steinbrecher, 31, who appeared a month ago in a video released by Hamas.

They are all accompanied by support vehicles and a group of soldiers.

Left behind are some of the patrol cars that cut off and direct traffic.

Before continuing in her car, agent Betty Perez tells the reporter where to continue.

She realizes that he is Spanish and jumps.

“You have in front of you a Flemish and Camarón Israeli police force,” shouts in Spanish this 37-year-old woman with Moroccan Jewish ancestors who moved to Catalonia and who declares herself a fan of Camarón de la Isla. As proof, she wears the Same tattoo as the singer, with a star and a crescent.

“Many believe here that it is a political tattoo, but no, it is in her honor.”

A moment of the march of the relatives of the hostages who are still kidnapped in Gaza.Luis de Vega

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