Yocheved is 85 years old and is one of the hostages freed by Hamas militiamen: "I went through hell"

The 85-year-old Hamas hostage Yochved Lifshitz, released this Monday by the al-Qasam Brigades, the armed wing of the Islamist group that controls Gaza, explained this Tuesday, in a statement from the Tel Aviv hospital where she is hospitalized, how It has been the more than two weeks that she has been detained: “I went through hell.”

“They took me, with my legs on one side and my head on the other, on a motorcycle,” said this woman sitting in a wheelchair during her appearance before the media, where she stated that when she was transported to Gaza her kidnappers beat her with sticks. .

He added that his captors took away the watch and jewelry he was wearing.. After making part of the journey, they later forced him to walk cross-country until they reached a tunnel to enter the Strip.. The elderly woman described Hamas's network of passageways as “a spider web.”

At the end of one of the tunnels she was taken to a large room where there were 25 other Hamas abductees, until two or three hours later she was taken with four other hostages to a separate room. There “they treated us well,” he noted, specifying that they gave him food and medicine. Lifshitz regretted that a fence that has cost “2 billion” has not served to protect Israelis, referring to the security barrier that separates Gaza from Israel.

Visibly affected and somewhat disoriented, she urged that all the hostages, more than 220, be released and able to return to their homes, in a press conference at the Ichilov medical center in Tel Aviv.

The al-Qasam Brigades reported last night the release of Lifshitz and another Israeli woman, Nurit Yitzhak, 80, after mediation by Egypt and Qatar, for what the spokesman for that militia, Abu Obeida, pointed out as “compelling humanitarian reasons.” and satisfactory.

The husbands of both women, who were also kidnapped, remain in the hands of the Islamists. The four were abducted on October 7 from their homes by Hamas in the Nir Oz kibbutz, where Hamas militiamen killed members of that community. Lifshitz's husband is well-known peace activist Oded Lifshitz, 83, who has transported cancer patients in Gaza to Israeli hospitals for treatment.