Family members of hostages still being held by Hamas for more than a year are in D.C. this week, urging President Donald Trump’s administration to push forward with negotiations to secure their release.
“We have already met with some of Mr. Trump’s advisers,” said Ilan Dalal, the father of Guy Gilboa Dalal, one of the remaining 20-plus hostages. “We are trying to make them understand that the deal we need is for all the hostages to be released, not just some of them.”
Dalal made the trip to D.C. from his home in Israel.
“Every minute they are being held in very, very harsh conditions,” Dalal said. “Some of them are chained most of the time.”
Last week, Hamas brushed off Trump’s latest threat and reiterated that it will only free the remaining hostages in exchange for a lasting ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
The militant group accused Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of trying to back out of the ceasefire agreement they reached in January. The agreement calls for negotiations over a second phase in which the hostages would be released in exchange for more Palestinian prisoners, a permanent ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
Dalal, who has seen video footage confirming his son is alive, said it gave him some hope, but acknowledged that “it is getting more and more difficult.”
“We get up every morning, gathering ourselves for another day to fight for our children,” Dalal said. “It tortures the families. It’s tearing them apart.”
Hamas is believed to still have 24 living hostages taken during the Oct. 7, 2023, attack that triggered the war. It is also holding the bodies of 34 others who were either killed in the initial attack or while in captivity, as well as the remains of a soldier killed in the 2014 Gaza War.
Hamas released 25 Israeli hostages and the bodies of eight more in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners in the first 42-day phase of the ceasefire.
Israel supports what it says is a new U.S. plan for the second phase in which Hamas would release half the remaining hostages immediately and the rest when a permanent ceasefire is negotiated. Hamas has rejected the proposal and says it is sticking with the agreement signed in January.
“I have no privilege to break down, because my son, as we speak, is counting on me to do whatever I can in order to get him out,” Dalal said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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