RAFAH, Palestinian Territories, Feb 22, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - A crowd cheered as 
masked militants brought two pale and dazed Israeli captives onto a rainy 
stage in front of cameras for the seventh hostage-prisoner exchange of the 
Gaza ceasefire Saturday.

Around the stage, Hamas fighters stood in an orderly fashion in the southern 
Gazan city of Rafah as the pair were handed over to the Red Cross, with Avera 
Mengistu, one of the two freed men, walking with apparent difficulty.

Like the hostages at previous liberations, Tal Shoham and Mengistu were 
handed liberation certificates in Hebrew before being helped into vehicles 
from the Red Cross, which acts as an intermediary, an AFP journalist 
reported.

A Hamas source told AFP that the Palestinian Islamist movement planned to 
release the other four living hostages from the Nuseirat refugee camp in 
central Gaza later in the morning.

In Rafah and Nuseirat, the militant group had prepared for a now well-
rehearsed ceremony, building stages to parade the hostages to be released in 
front of large posters and billboards advertising its cause or praising 
fallen fighters.

In Rafah, Hamas fighters from the group's armed wing, the Al-Qassam Bridages, 
wearing fatigues, balaclavas and green headbands stood in a cordon around the 
handover area to keep the crowd out.

In a display of strength, some held Kalashnikov assault rifles and others 
flaunted hand-held rocket launchers, while Hamas' green flag flew around the 
square on buildings destroyed by war in the Palestinian territory.

Fidaa Awda, a resident of Rafah who attended the ceremony told AFP: "We say 
and continue to say that we are with the resistance, we are with the valiant 
Brigades, we are with the fighters."
- War slogans -

In front of a table covered by camouflage cloth on stage, US-made assault 
rifles of the kind the Israeli military uses were displayed, allegedly taken 
from Israeli soldiers in combat.

Behind the table, a conspicuously placed slogan read "We are the flood. We 
are the extreme strength" in Arabic, English and Hebrew.

The slogan referenced Operation Al-Aqsa flood, the name used by Hamas and its 
allied Palestinian factions for their October 7, 2023, attack on Israel that 
sparked the Gaza war.

Other banners showed fallen Hamas military commanders including former armed 
wing chief Muhammad Deif, killed by an Israeli air strike in 2024.

A poster below the stage read "and the red freedom has a door, struck by 
every bloodied hand".

The sentence is a verse from a 1926 anti-colonial poem by Egyptian poet Ahmad 
Shawqi which slain Hamas leader and October 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar was 
seen reciting in a video taken during the Gaza war.

All around the square, hundreds of Gazans had gathered to watch the ceremony 
on this foggy, rainy winter morning.

Some stood on large chunks of concrete from nearby buildings demolished by 
bombs, others on the upper floors of buildings whose front walls had been 
torn off by explosions.

One man held a young boy clad in military fatigues and a Hamas headband as 
militants in arms paraded on the back of pickup trucks.

In a statement, Hamas praised the hostage releases and said that the Israeli 
public had two options.

"Either they receive their prisoners in coffins, as happened on Thursday, due 
to Netanyahu's arrogance, or they embrace their prisoners alive in commitment 
to the (Palestinian) resistance's conditions."

Sixty-five hostages taken during Hamas's October 7 attack are still being 
held in Gaza, including 35 who the Israeli military says are dead.