Israel-Hamas captive release expected on Monday before Egypt Summit

Oct 13, 2025 News

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(AL-JAZEERA) Israel says it expects to receive all its remaining living captives from Gaza early on Monday, a key step in the ceasefire now in effect.

Speaking on Sunday, government spokeswoman Shosh Bedrosian said Israel anticipates all 20 living captives will be returned together in the early hours of Monday.

As in previous exchanges during the two-year war, the captives will first be handed over to the Red Cross, which will transport them to an Israeli military base inside Gaza for initial medical checks before they proceed to Israel to reunite with their families.

Once that process is complete, Israel will begin releasing Palestinian prisoners, Bedrosian said. They will be freed “once Israel has confirmation that all of our hostages set to be released tomorrow are across the border into Israel”, she added

Under the terms of the ceasefire, Israel is to release about 2,000 Palestinians it holds in detention, many without charge. The prisoners include 250 Palestinians serving life sentences. Imprisoned Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti, whose release Palestinians have long sought, will not be among them, Israel has said. Some detainees will be released in the occupied West Bank, where relatives have been instructed by Israel not to hold celebrations or speak to the media.

Israel is also preparing to receive the bodies of 28 captives confirmed to have died in captivity, Bedrosian said.

‘Trump’s show’

The planned exchange comes three days after Israel’s government approved the first phase of a deal aimed at ending the war in Gaza – and just as United States President Donald Trump, who spearheaded the agreement, is to visit Israel before a summit in Egypt.

“It is Trump’s show,” Al Jazeera’s correspondent Nour Odeh said from Amman, Jordan, because the network is banned from Israel. “He will be arriving in Israel, meeting with the families of captives, addressing the Knesset and then going to Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh, where he has summoned the leaders of more than 20 countries.”

As part of the Trump-led agreement, Israeli forces have withdrawn from parts of Gaza, including Gaza City and other northern areas, although they still control more than half of its territory.

Palestinians returning to combat zones that they were displaced from have found widespread devastation – “wastelands” where their neighbourhoods once stood, Al Jazeera’s Ibrahim al-Khalili reported from Gaza City.

Humanitarian aid has begun to trickle into the enclave as part of the ceasefire with dozens of trucks arriving on Sunday. But distribution remains slow for a population that has endured months of extreme deprivation, said Al Jazeera correspondent Hind Khoudary.

“People are not waiting only for food but also for tents, mobile shelters, solar panels and desperately needed medical equipment and medicines – items largely unavailable for the past two years,” Khoudary reported from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza. “Most people have lost their savings, have no access to bank accounts and are completely dependent on humanitarian aid to survive.”

Leaders to convene in Egypt

The Gaza summit, scheduled for Monday in Sharm el-Sheikh, will be co-chaired by Trump and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

It is expected to be attended by more than a dozen world leaders, including United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Although both Israel and Hamas said they will not participate, Cairo has hailed the summit as a “historic” event that will seek “to end the war in the Gaza Strip, enhance efforts to achieve peace and stability in the Middle East”.

Egypt said a “document ending the war in the Gaza Strip” is also expected to be signed at the summit.

‘Hard work’ to come

Despite the ceasefire progress, many details on phase two of the deal – which is still to be negotiated – need to be ironed out, including the exact makeup of a post-war administration for Gaza and the fate of Hamas.

The second phase is expected to involve a phased Israeli withdrawal, Hamas’s disarmament, the establishment of new security and governance arrangements, and reconstruction.

“After the big day tomorrow for Trump, after the release of the hostages, … then comes the hard work,” Adnan Hayajneh, professor of international relations at the University of Qatar, told Al Jazeera. “If you look at the situation in Gaza, it’s like an earthquake happened. … There’s no government. There’s no schools. There’s nothing there.”

US Vice President JD Vance appeared to acknowledge on Sunday that the road to stability would be difficult. “It is going to take consistent leverage and consistent pressure from the president of the United States on down,” he told US broadcaster CBS.

Meanwhile, Balakrishnan Rajagopal, the UN special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing said Israel must allow tents and caravans to immediately be delivered to the Gaza Strip, as displaced Palestinians returning to the north of the bombarded territory have found their homes and neighbourhoods destroyed.

The UN official said people are finding nothing but rubble in areas from which Israeli forces have withdrawn in northern Gaza.

“The psychological impacts and trauma are profound, and that’s what we are seeing right now as people are returning to northern Gaza,” he told Al Jazeera in an interview on Saturday.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been streaming back into Gaza’s north after Israeli forces pulled back on Friday as part of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas to halt the two-year conflict.

Palestinians across the coastal enclave have welcomed the suspension of Israel’s bombardment, which has killed more than 67,700 people since October 2023 and plunged Gaza into a humanitarian crisis.

The UN estimated that 92 percent of all residential buildings in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed since the war began, and hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians have been forced to live in tents and other makeshift shelters.

Rajagopal noted that tents and caravans were meant to be delivered to Gaza during a ceasefire early this year but “almost none” of them was allowed in due to Israel’s strict blockade.

“That is really to me the crux of the issue right now. Even immediate relief and aid to the people of Gaza is not possible unless Israel stops controlling all the entry points. That is essential,” the UN expert told Al Jazeera.

Rajagopal, who has used the term “domicide” to describe the decimation of homes across the Strip, said the destruction of housing in Gaza has been a central component of Israel’s genocide against Palestinians.

“The destruction of homes and clearing people from the area and making the area uninhabitable is one of the main ways in which the act of genocide has been committed,” he said, adding that the recovery process will ultimately take generations.

“It’s like another Nakba,” he said, referring to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine when Israel was created in 1948. “What has happened in the last two years is going to be something similar.”

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• ceasefire, Egypt Summit, Gaza, Hamas, Israel

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