Hamas has announced that the three individuals set to be released on Sunday as part of the deal are Romi Gonen, Emily Damari, and Doron Steinbracher. This follows Hamas’s claim that it has provided the list of hostages to be released in the first phase of the deal, although Israel has not yet officially confirmed the information.
Romi Gonen, 24, was abducted during the October 7 massacre at the party in Re’im and taken to the Gaza Strip. Since then, her family has been actively speaking to media outlets in Israel and worldwide, advocating for her safe return from terrorist captivity.
Last November, Romi’s father shared a heartfelt message for his daughter: “I want to send a message to my amazing, wonderful daughter. I don’t know anyone braver than you. You are our heroine,” he said. “We ask you: ‘Please hold on a little longer.’ We are doing everything we can to bring you home as soon as possible.”
Emily Damari was abducted during the October 7 massacre from her apartment in Kibbutz Kfar Aza. She remains the only British citizen still held captive by Hamas. Last year, her mother, Mandy, was forced to campaign on the streets of England to demand her release.
In an emotional interview at the end of December, Mandy expressed her devastation: “Prime Minister Keir Starmer told me that Britain would not support a ceasefire that was not conditional on the release of the hostages. And yet, Britain voted in favor of a ceasefire without any preconditions.”
Doron Steinbracher was kidnapped from her apartment in the youth housing complex on Kibbutz Kfar Aza. Doron’s last conversation with her mother was on Saturday morning, October 7, at 10:20. She called her mother, crying and scared, and told her that she could hear the terrorists trying to enter her apartment. With a lot of courage and the strength of a warrior, Doron managed to send her friends a voice message in which she said: “They kidnapped me!”
