'I just want to hug him': Israel's hostages may finally come home. Families can't wait

Ruby Chen is for now determined to keep referring to his son as a "hostage" in the traditional sense: He's being held against his will, may be hurt and will be released once the kidnappers get whatever they're asking for.

Chen, who's from New York, is not referring to him as a middle child who loved to sing and dance, adored basketball, had a loving girlfriend and was known inside the family as the "connector."

He's a hostage and a son in the present tense, still very much here.

Still alive.

On Sunday, a ceasefire deal endorsed by Israel and Hamas went ahead. It will see the first of dozens of captives held by the militant group Hamas in the Gaza Strip for the past 15 months freed. The truce will also see Palestinian prisoners released from Israeli prisons. It represents the first break in fighting in Gaza in over a year.

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In the deal's first phase, due to take place over six weeks, 33 hostages, including women, children and elderly people will be released in exchange for dozens of Palestinian prisoners.

In all, Hamas is holding seven Americans. Two of the three presumed to be alive are expected to be included in the deal's first stage, according to senior Biden administration officials.

Chen's son Itay, a citizen of the U.S., Israel and Germany, will not be among them.

Itay was 19 and serving in the Israel Defense Forces when Hamas attacked Israel's southern border with Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people and returning to Gaza with 251 other hostages.

Israel's intelligence services concluded in March that Itay was killed at some point by Hamas gunmen while he was deployed with a tank unit. His body was brought to Gaza and hidden, to be used as a bargaining chip in an exchange like the one getting off the ground Sunday, they said.

Yet in the absence of physical, corroborating evidence, Itay's family is still holding onto hope that the son they think of as a classic middle child, full of energy and mischief, "who had all the possibilities in front of him" and "whose favorite sport was playing mom off dad," is somehow, against the odds, still amongst the living hostages.

"Hamas has not given us any indication" that he's dead, his father said in a phone interview from Israel. "From our perspective, if you want to define my son the first adjective would be 'hostage.' That has not changed."

At last, Israel and Hamas reach ceasefire

What has changed is that for the first time since November 2023 – when 105 hostages were freed from Gaza during a weeklong truce between Israel and Hamas, while Israel released about 240 Palestinian detainees from Israeli prisons – families like the Chens now stand a real chance of being reunited with their loved ones.

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Yet the Chens might need to wait a while longer. The identities of those being freed in Gaza have not officially been made public, though several Israeli media outlets did publish Friday a leaked list of the 33 hostages expected to be released in the first stage. It includes kidnapped children, female soldiers who were teenagers when they were abducted, two Americans, a Nova music festival survivor and an 84-year-old peace activist.

Israel has cautioned that it can't guarantee that all of the hostages released in the deal's first phase will definitely be alive. The order of the releases has also not been made public because, Israel says, it can change last-minute.

On the Palestinian side, Israel's justice ministry published a list of 95 prisoners who could be included in the first part of the swap. Most were women, arrested after Hamas' Oct. 7 attacks. About ten thousand Palestinians are imprisoned in Israel. Some have been detained for throwing stones or incendiary devices. Others have been jailed for crimes including attempted murder or manufacturing knives and daggers. Some have murkier offenses attached to their names such as “state security” or "damage to the security area." Some have no charges at all.

Who are the Americans held in Gaza?

Sagui Dekel-Chen, 36 ? who is not related to Itay Chen though the two men share a similar tragic fate as hostages held in Gaza ? and Keith Siegel, 64, are expected to be the first two Americans freed in the deal.

Dekel-Chen has family ties to Bloomfield, Conn. He qualifies for release in the agreement's first stage because he is believed to be badly injured. Dekel-Chen was last seen kissing his pregnant wife as he locked her and their two daughters inside a safe room as Hamas militants invaded his home on Nir Oz kibbutz, in southern Israel on Oct. 7.

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Dekel-Chen's family escaped. He did not.

In a phone interview, Dekel-Chen's father Jonathan described his son as an entrepreneur whose "moonlighting gig is repurposing old buses for new uses." He said he's "the son anyone would love to have. You can't meet him and not smile. He's endlessly positive. He's a builder. He's a creator. He's been that his entire life."

Siegel is originally from Chapel Hill, N.C. Since he's in his mid-60s, he meets the age criteria for release in the deal's early stages. He was kidnapped along with his wife Aviva from Kibbutz Kfar Aza, one of the hardest-hit communities during Hamas' attacks. Just a mile from Gaza, Kfar Aza's houses were burned by explosives, riddled with bullet holes and reduced to rubble by tank shells. Israel's military battled Hamas militants there for days.

Aviva Siegel was freed in the November 2023 truce. As a hostage, she had to beg for food and water, she's said in interviews. Since her release, she's been pleading with Israel's government to help secure her husband's freedom. As Hamas militants led him away from their home on Oct. 7, his ribs were broken and he was shot in the hand.

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Adi Alexander is waiting to learn if his 21-year-old son Edan will be among the released hostages. He said in a phone interview that he is hoping his child has been spared the worst while in captivity.

"I just want to hug him and I hope he will say, 'You know what? It wasn't so bad guys. I'm good.'" A high school swim team star from New Jersey, Edan Alexander has piercing eyes and a smile his father has said was popular with girls. He chose to spend his gap year before college serving in Israel's military when he was kidnapped.

Hamas released a video in which he appeared in late November. He speaks under duress, and in English for part of it, urging the Israeli government to end the war and make a peace deal. The Alexander family recognizes that because their son was in the IDF when he was kidnapped he is unlikely to be released before the deal's second phase, at the earliest. Negotiations about the timing of that phase are expected to happen by the 16th day of the first phase. However, the Alexanders are optimistic about the ceasefire and what it could mean for them.

"We've been hopeful all the time. For the first time, it feels like we are finally there," said Adi Alexander.

Finally, jubilation in Gaza

Still, a sense of expectation and guarded relief is not limited to Israel's hostage families.

In Gaza, as the news was announced Wednesday that Israel and Hamas had committed to a fresh ceasefire, millions of Palestinians celebrated. They took to the streets to sound horns, wave Palestinian flags and express jubilation amid a backdrop of countless buildings and homes that have been reduced to rubble.

The agreement calls for a surge in humanitarian assistance to Gaza, where Palestinians, the United Nations and aid groups like the International Committee of the Red Cross say there are severe shortages of food, water, shelter and fuel. The UN and ICRC say they are preparing to scale up their aid operations for when the ceasefire takes effect.

If the agreement holds, it will pause the fighting that has killed over 46,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's Hamas-run authorities. Most of the region's 2.3 million people have been displaced multiple times.

"It's all about celebrations right now," Nour Swirki, a Palestinian TV journalist, said in a brief WhatsApp message.

Swirki has spent large parts of the war living in a tent, on the grounds of a hospital in Deir al Balah, in central Gaza. She evacuated her children to Egypt and is desperate to be reunited with them.

Swirki's wishes seem implausibly modest: a home, sleep without fear, to hug her children.

Trapped in Gaza for a year: One journalist's harrowing story

In fact, even as the ceasefire looms, Israel has continued its bombing campaign in Gaza.

Dozens of Palestinians have been killed and hundreds more injured since the agreement was unveiled.

Amal Nassar said her family is sheltering in a neighbor's apartment in their bombed-out building in Deir Al-Balah, also in central Gaza. Nassar spent months raising thousands of dollars for a time when she might be able to evacuate to Egypt with her husband and three young children. As the war has dragged on, prices for everyday goods have skyrocketed. All the money has now been spent for "survival."

The border in every direction is closed to civilians.

"Yeah!!!," Nassar wrote in a WhatsApp message about the ceasefire, before sending a reporter a video of her three children jumping up and down excitedly while repeating, "Ceasefire! Ceasefire! Ceasefire!"

One of Nassar's children, Mira, born during the war, just turned one. In the video, she, too, jumps alongside her siblings, Ahmad, 8, and Yara, 7. She mimics their speech and movements. Her feet are unsteady.

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"We are OK," Nassar said in the message. "We have lost lots of our relatives."

Nassar said if the war finally ends, her family may stay and rebuild. Or try to leave again. She's not certain.

Waiting for definitive proof of life ? or death

Israel's government believes 94 hostages are still in Gaza, 34 of whom are presumed dead.

In addition to Itay Chen, they believe American hostages Gad Haggai, 72; his wife, Judith Weinstein, 70; and Omer Neutra, 21, are dead. None of them are expected to be returned to their families in the deal's early stages.

For the families, the waiting is intolerable.

"All the hostages need come out, regardless of their physical status," said Chen, who wants definitive proof before describing his son as deceased. Chen said he plans to fly to Washington, D.C., to attend President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration on Monday and meet with members of Trump's national security team and envoy for hostage affairs. The other families of American hostages have also been invited to Trump's inauguration.

"We need to remind everybody there are five Americans who are not coming back in the deal's first stage and that the obligation the United States has to its citizens will not be forgotten," he said.

Ultimately, it's not clear how long such reminders will need to continue. The return of all the hostages is not expected to conclude until the deal's third and final stage. There is no specific timeframe for this yet.

One of the hostages has been waiting to be released for most of his young life. Kfir Bibas was kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7 when he was nine months old. On Saturday, he had another birthday, his second.

Both were in captivity.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Israel and Hamas are ready for a hostage deal. So are the families