Mother of woman being held hostage by Hamas fears time is running out for her daughter
The longer it goes with no hostages released 'the worse their situation becomes,’ says ex-Israeli colonel
A mother who last spoke to her daughter on Oct. 7 as the 23-year-old was trying to escape the Hamas assault on the Nova music festival in Israel fears time is running out to bring her child home since it appears there's no end in sight for the Israel-Hamas war.
The last three months have been a nightmare for Meirav Leshem Gonen, the mother of Romi Gonen, one of about 240 people taken hostage by Hamas that day.
"It's horrifying because time is moving so quickly, but it's still Oct. 7 — that's how it feels," she said of her daughter during an interview with CBC News from Tel Aviv.
"It's frustrating, and you feel like you're running after time."
Keeping the pressure on
Gonen has become one of the most outspoken members of the hostages' families since Hamas's surprise attack.
She fills her days with interviews, meetings with government and military officials and speeches she hopes will maintain pressure on anyone who can help get her daughter released.
The role didn't come naturally to her, but Gonen says she's driven to do it because she knows what her daughter is going through.
"We understand the conditions for the hostages are very bad, not just the lack of food, the lack of fresh water — it's also how they treat them, what they are going through," said Gonen, adding she knows about the conditions her daughter is living in because she's spoken to hostages released during November's truce in exchange for Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.
According to an official Israeli tally, 129 people are still being held in Gaza, after more than 100 were repatriated during the truce or recovered during a military offensive.
Daughter said she'd been shot
While grateful for any information about Romi, Gonen fears she hasn't been given the whole picture.
"I'm not taking what I've been told as the whole truth," she said. "There are reasons they are telling us the good stuff and leaving the bad stuff out, but we know what the conditions are like and what some of them are going through and we are not fooled by them telling us only the good for our feelings."
Gonen says she spoke with a hostage released in November who told her that Romi was severely injured, which tracks with what her daughter told her herself.
She last spoke with Romi for about four hours on the morning of Oct. 7 as she was trying to hide from Hamas militants. Gonen said that during the call, her daughter told her she'd been shot in the hand and had seen friends killed around her.
According to Gonen, her daughter told her she was hiding in a car and then in some bushes, and that she was afraid she was going to die. Gonen said all she could do in the moment was comfort Romi over the phone, until the line finally cut out completely.
"All I could tell her was how much I loved her and she could hear my voice and hear how I assured her that we would do everything we could, and that I was with her and that she was not alone."
Days later, Gonen learned from an Israeli government official that her daughter's phone had been found in Gaza.
'Comforted to know she is still alive'
Gonen says she was both devastated and relieved when she heard about her daughter's condition from former hostages.
"She is a young girl. Possibly losing her hand will be devastating to her, but I was also comforted to know she is still alive," she said, adding that not seeing her daughter's name on the list of those being released over the seven-day truce was difficult.
"At the beginning, we knew it would be mothers and children released, so it was OK. The second day was OK. The third day was OK," she said.
"The seventh day, I didn't sleep, and when she wasn't on the list again, it was very difficult. We were at the funeral of a boy who was with her that day, so it was too much, too much to take in."
Since the end of the temporary truce, Israel's bombardment of Gaza has intensified and, like others with family members who are hostages, Gonen worries about her daughter being caught in the crossfire of war.
She says she doesn't want to talk about the war because "I'm not a strategist, I'm not the prime minister," but Gonen says she believes the fighting has two different aims: One is to bring back the hostages and the other is to solve the conflict as soon as possible.
"But people have to understand that we are living in Israel now with zero confidence — we feel not safe, so it has to be finished."
Temporary ceasefire unlikely, ex-IDF colonel says
In recent days, Israel has signalled its willingness to engage in another temporary pause in fighting in order to secure release of the 129 hostages still in Gaza.
So far, no such deal has been reached, but reports say negotiations are ongoing.
"The longer it goes with no additional hostages released, the worse their situation becomes," said Moty Cristal, a retired colonel with the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) and a former hostage negotiator.
"The tension between the military operation in Gaza, and the hostages' safety grows, and the hostages' lives are more threatened than ever because they are being kept in the areas where the Israeli army is operating."
Cristal also believes a temporary ceasefire facilitating the release of more hostages is unlikely because it is no longer in Hamas's interest.
"Hamas knows that Israel has two to three weeks tops before the international community, and the U.S. specifically, pressure it to end the operation as it's currently being fought, so now all they have to do is wait," he said.
For Gonen, though, making the world understand that her daughter is a real person — a young girl who had a goal of saving money to travel the world, who was always the life of the party and close to her family — is her driving force.
She says she also wants to stress that the plight of the hostages is a humanitarian cause — not a political one — that everyone should recognize.
"This is an important moment in history," Gonen said. "Nothing like this has ever happened anywhere, so I ask the world to choose the right side, to make sure this will not happen again in any other place around the globe."
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