A former Israeli hostage has said that all Gaza captives could have returned home “a long time ago”, as relatives of newly released hostages described the torment endured by their loved ones.Arbel Yehud was held in captivity for nearly 500 days before being freed earlier this year under a previous Gaza truce.She spoke on Wednesday at a press conference alongside families of newly freed hostages, including her partner Ariel Cunio, released this week along with the remaining living captives.”We could have brought them back a long time ago,” Yehud said.She said the deal that was brokered by US President Donald Trump could have been struck earlier, in turn saving the lives of more hostages.”While we are here, fortunate to embrace our loved ones, there are dozens of families that never will,” said Yehud.During their attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, which sparked the war, Hamas-led militants abducted 251 hostages to Gaza.- ‘Bombings do not save’ -A vocal critic of the Israeli government, Yehud has participated in rallies calling for a ceasefire and the return of hostages.Earlier this year, she accused authorities of endangering captives by stalling negotiations.”I want you to know that when Israel blows up deals, it does so on the heads of the hostages,” Yehud said at a rally earlier this year.”Their conditions immediately worsen, food diminishes, pressure increases, and bombings and military actions do not save them, they endanger their lives.”Yehud’s own release in January was marked by chaotic scenes, with television footage showing masked gunmen struggling to clear a path for her through crowds gathered to witness the exchange.Critics of the Israeli government — and especially of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — argue that Israel could have ended the war months earlier, during a ceasefire agreed in January.That truce lasted until mid-March, when Israel resumed strikes in Gaza.This ceasefire, the second in the two-year war, was largely based on a three-stage plan announced by former US president Joe Biden in May 2024.More than 30 hostages were released from Gaza as part of that truce.- ‘Start a new journey’ -At the same press event on Wednesday, Sylvia Cunio, mother of Ariel and David Cunio, described the anguish of waiting for her sons’ return after losing several family members in Hamas’s October 7 attacks.”My children are home! Two years ago, one morning, I lost half of my family. Two of my children, two of my daughters-in-law, and two of my granddaughters were lost on the face of the earth,” Cunio said.”The world collapsed on me and my family in an instant.”Cunio, who emigrated with her husband from Argentina to Israel in 1986, has also been active at weekly Tel Aviv rallies urging a ceasefire to secure the hostages’ release.”For two years, I didn’t breathe. For two years, I felt like I had no air. And today, I stand here, in front of you, and I want to shout out loud, David and Ariel are here!” she said.”I know it will take time until they recover, but I trust my children.”Also speaking Wednesday, Kobi Kalfon, father of freed hostage Segev Kalfon, said his son endured “extreme” suffering during his two years in captivity.”It is important to note that his two years in captivity were truly difficult, reaching many extreme situations of hunger, mental, emotional and physical abuse,” said Kalfon.”We now start a new journey, his journey to rehabilitation. It will not be simple, but we will be with him, hand in hand.”

The lives of a French couple held by Iran for more than three years and who this week were handed lengthy jail sentences for espionage are at risk, their families warned Thursday, as France condemned their conviction on “baseless” charges.Cecile Kohler, 41, and Jacques Paris, 72, were arrested in May 2022 and have been detained ever since. Their current location is unknown after they were moved from Tehran’s Evin prison in the wake of the Israeli strike on the facility in the June war.They are among a number of Europeans still held by Iran in what several European governments, including France, describe as a deliberate strategy of hostage-taking by Tehran to extract concessions from the West.”The French state is responsible, every day that goes by, for the survival of Cecile and Jacques,” Noemie Kohler, Cecile’s sister, told reporters.She said she had spoken to the pair on Tuesday “for eight minutes via video call” under heavy surveillance, with the brief communication still offering no clues over where they were being held.”It was a distress call,” she said.”They told me they were exhausted,” she said, adding the pair are “at the end of their tether”.Cecile Kohler told her sister she could not endure “another three months or even a few weeks of detention”. Anne-Laure Paris, daughter of Jacques Paris, said she wanted to be “the mouthpiece for his exhaustion, his despair, his distress, and his anger”.”My father told me: ‘I am staring death in the face,'” she added.They confirmed that the sentence, initially announced by the Iranian judiciary on Tuesday, amounted to 17 years in prison for Jacques Paris and 20 years for Cecile Kohler.The families insist they are wholly innocent and were only visiting Iran as tourists.Kohler was shown in October 2022 on Iranian television in what activists described as a “forced confession”, a practice relatively common for detainees in Iran which rights groups say is equivalent to torture.Paris-based lawyer Chirinne Ardakani expressed concern they could again be subjected to “something staged for propaganda purposes”.- ‘Complete mobilisation’ -They “were arbitrarily sentenced… to very long prison terms”, French foreign ministry spokesman Pascal Confavreux told reporters in Paris.”The charges… are completely baseless,” he added, calling for their “immediate” release.France had filed a case with the Hague-based International Court of Justice over the couple’s detention, saying they were held under a policy that “targets French nationals travelling in or visiting Iran”.But in September, the ICJ suddenly dropped the case at France’s request, causing disappointment among the families.”If there is one thing that we should absolutely not doubt, it is the full and complete mobilisation at all levels of the state to obtain their immediate release,” said the French foreign ministry spokesman.Iran, which has previously carried out exchanges of Westerners for Iranians held by the West, has previously said the couple could be freed as part of a swap deal with France, which would also see the release of Iranian Mahdieh Esfandiari. Esfandiari was arrested in France in February on charges of promoting terrorism on social media, according to French authorities. She is due to go on trial in Paris from January 13.Frenchman Benjamin Briere, who spent over 1,000 days detained in Iran from May 2020 to May 2023 on national security charges he vehemently denied, told AFP that despite his freedom, “I won’t be able to rest until Cecile and Jacques are back”.”Everyone knows that their fate is not being decided in court. It’s a circus,” said Briere, who later this month is publishing a book “Azadi” (“Freedom” in Persian) about his ordeal.”Everything is happening at a higher, diplomatic and political level,” he added.He said he was now coping “more or less okay” but complained that reintegration into society was difficult as “there is no follow-up, no support, no help”.

The World Health Organization has warned that infectious diseases are “spiralling out of control” in the Gaza Strip, with only 13 of the Palestinian territory’s 36 hospitals even partially functioning.”Whether meningitis… diarrhoea, respiratory illnesses, we’re talking about a mammoth amount of work,” Hanan Balkhy, regional director for the United Nations’ health body, told AFP in Cairo. A ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas has raised hopes of life-saving aid and healthcare finally reaching Palestinians in Gaza after two years of war, but Balkhy warned the challenges are “unimaginable”.”We need more fuel to go into Gaza, we need more food, more medical equipment, medications, medics, doctors,” she said in an interview on Wednesday, echoing demands by international leaders for Israel to allow in a massive increase of aid.WHO data shows there are only eight health facilities, all of them partially functioning, in Gaza City — the territory’s main urban hub.The organisation says the hospitals still standing are suffering dire shortages of medical personnel, who have themselves faced famine and Israel’s relentless offensive, which has claimed nearly 68,000 lives according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The UN considers those figures reliable.For Balkhy, when people talk about repairing Gaza’s devastated hospitals, “the question is how many of them are available for rehabilitation versus (having to) rebuild all over again?””We’re talking about billions of dollars, and we’re talking about decades of work,” she said, after the territory’s healthcare was essentially “dismantled”.- ‘Very little left’ -Since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel which sparked the war, Gaza’s health facilities have suffered more than 800 attacks, according to UN data.”There is very little left of the healthcare system. You have children that were born over the past two years, who many of them, I’m assuming, have received zero doses of immunisations.”The UN says nearly 42,000 people are suffering life-changing injuries, a quarter of them children.Balkhy called for patients to be able to once again “access the West Bank and Jerusalem, so that they can get the care that is available right close by, and that’s the place where they used to go for care”.Israel has severely limited permits for Palestinians to leave Gaza throughout the war, making medical evacuations nearly impossible.Mental health needs, on the other hand, have more than doubled among the more than two million Palestinians trapped under bombardment for two years, according to the WHO.Over one million people require “urgent support”, but available care falls far short.”We’re really hoping that the peace is fully sustained, so that we can start,” Balkhy said.