AFP :
US envoy Steve Witkoff on Saturday met the anguished families of Israeli hostages still held in Gaza, as fears for the captives’ survival mounted almost 22 months into the war sparked by Hamas’s October 2023 attack.
Witkoff was greeted with some applause and pleas for assistance from hundreds of protesters gathered in Tel Aviv, before going into a closed meeting with the families.
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum confirmed the meeting was underway and videos shared online showed Witkoff arriving as families chanted “Bring them home!” and “We need your help.”
The visit came one day after Witkoff visited a US-backed aid station in Gaza, to inspect efforts to get food into the devastated Palestinian territory.
Yotam Cohen, brother of 21-year-old hostage Nimrod Cohen, told AFP in the square: “The war needs to end. The Israeli government will not end it willingly. It has refused to do so.
“The Israeli government must be stopped. For our sakes, for our soldiers’ sakes, for our hostages’ sakes, for our sons and for the future generations of everybody in the Middle East.”
After the meeting, the Forum released a statement saying that Witkoff had given them a personal commitment that he and US President Donald Trump would work to return the remaining hostages.
The United States, along with Egypt and Qatar, had been mediating ceasefire talks between Hamas and Israel that would allow the hostages to be released and humanitarian aid to flow more freely.
But talks broke down last month and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is under increasing domestic pressure to come up with another way to secure the missing hostages, alive and dead.
He is also facing international calls to open Gaza’s borders to more food aid, after UN and humanitarian agencies warned that more than two million Palestinian civilians are facing starvation.
But Israel’s top general warned that there would be no respite in fighting in Gaza if the hostages were not released.
