TEL AVIV — As Israel and Hamas try to hammer out the thorny details of a U.S.-backed cease-fire proposal, Israeli officials are seeking the release of the remaining hostages held in Gaza. But they don’t actually know how many of them are alive.
So far, Hamas has failed to provide Israeli negotiators with a list of the remaining hostages, raising fears that the group lost track of them amid the war — or worse, that it might not want to reveal how many have been killed.
Israel says that 133 hostages are still in captivity, ranging from toddlers to the elderly, and that 36 of those hostages are confirmed dead.
But the fates of about 100 hostages — including Israelis and foreign nationals, peace activists and soldiers, mothers and grandfathers — are still unclear, six months after the start of the war. The uncertainty is not only complicating negotiations but also leaving the hostages’ families in anguish.
The pain of each passing day “is almost exponential,” said Jon Polin, father of 23-year-old Hersh Goldberg-Polin, a dual Israeli-American citizen who was abducted from an outdoor music festival on Oct. 7.
In gruesome footage posted by his captors, Goldberg-Polin is shown packed into the back of a truck, his arm blown off by a grenade. Maybe he was treated, Polin and his wife, Rachel Goldberg, hoped. “We remain optimistic because we have no choice,” he said.
On that day, Hamas and allied militants killed around 1,200 people in Israel and kidnapped 253 others, dragging them back to Gaza and kicking