Keith Siegel has been free for nearly four months, but he is still pained by vivid images of his 484 days as a Hamas hostage and of those still held in Gaza’s tunnels.

Siegel isn’t just talking about the physical and psychological abuse he was subjected to by his captors or the suffocating conditions and malnutrition he faced in tunnels deep underground. He’s also terrified that Israel’s intensifying bombardment and ground offensive will kill the remaining living hostages – or drive Hamas to execute them.

Hamas and other militant groups kidnapped 251 people from Israel during the October 7, 2023 terror attacks.

As Israel marks 600 days since the war began, Siegel and dozens of former hostages and relatives are renewing their call for a deal that will end the conflict and secure the release of all 58 still held captive, living and dead. Protesters blocked roads in Tel Aviv on Wednesday and gathered in Hostage Square and in front of the US embassy to put pressure on the Israeli government to make a deal with Hamas and return the remaining hostages.

For Omer Shem Tov, among the last of the hostages to be released before the ceasefire collapsed in March, there is an ever-present feeling of guilt. Every time he eats, he thinks about the hostages not eating. Every time he showers, he knows those still captive in Gaza cannot.

“I can feel it here,” he says, pointing at his throat. “I feel like I’m being choked.”

Like many other released hostages, Siegel and Shem Tov have dedicated much of their newfound freedom to advocating for the release of those left behind.

Most of the Israeli public wants to see a ceasefire deal to bring the remaining hostages home, according to numerous polls, but as those who survived captivity, the freed hostages are the movement’s most powerful voices. They see their advocacy as a near-sacred obligation to those still in Gaza.

“The hostages’ lives are now more critical than eliminating Hamas,” said Shem Tov.

Meanwhile, Siegel has raised awareness about the horrific conditions of captivity he endured and the dangers the remaining hostages face.

Speaking from his daughter’s home in northern Israel, Siegel looked healthier than when he was released in February. He has regained some of the weight he lost in captivity, color has returned to his face and he has been spending time with his family and out in nature. But his mind is never far from the tunnels of Gaza and thoughts of Matan Angrest, a 22-year-old Israeli soldier, and Omri Miran, a 48-year-old father-of-two, with whom he was held.

“I think about them every day. Many times a day. And I worry about them – and I miss them,” Siegel said.

Siegel and Miran were held together for nearly five months, until July 2024, passing the time by talking about their shared taste in music and their love for their families. Miran has two daughters – Alma and Ronni, now aged 2 and 4 –  whose names easily rolled off Siegel’s tongue.

“It was very difficult for Omri to think about his daughters growing up without their dad and how hard it was for him to think about him missing their growing-up, their development milestones,” Siegel said.

Miran called out directly to Siegel in a hostage video released by Hamas last month. Siegel said his fellow former captive looked like “a different person… in a negative way.”

Siegel hesitates to describe his relationship with Angrest as one of a father and his son, but it’s clear they built a special bond during the 67 days they were locked in a very small room, sharing a single bed. Angrest helped Siegel improve his Arabic, talked about his love of the Maccabi Haifa soccer team and day-dreamt about sharing a meal together at his parents’ home and seeing a match once they’re free.

Siegel said he, Angrest and Miran used to pray that the Israeli military would rescue them in a daring operation. But that all changed in August when Hamas executed six hostages as Israeli troops closed in on their location. Siegel learned about it in captivity and his dreams quickly turned into nightmares.

“I was afraid that the IDF might try to rescue me and that I might be killed by the captors,” Siegel recalled. “It’s something that worries me in regards to the hostages that are still there.”

He added that he believes Israel’s expanding military operations now increase the threats to the hostages’ lives, even as the Israeli military has pledged to take precautions to avoid harming the remaining captives.

“Hostages were killed from the war,” Siegel said. “I think this can be avoided by getting all of the hostages back. That’s the solution, to get them back – to reach an agreement that will bring them back.”

Shem Tov echoed his fears. The scariest moments in captivity, he said, were when Israeli bombs fell around him, weapons he knew were powerful enough where “your life can be taken in every moment.”

“I was scared of dying from my own people, from my own brothers,” said Shem Tov.

Siegel and Shem Tov have met with US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and called on both to prioritize reaching a deal to free the hostages. While the Israeli prime minister has made clear he believes defeating Hamas is more important than freeing the hostages, many hostage advocates are placing their hopes in Trump’s hands.

“I am home because of his efforts,” Siegel said. “I believe that he wants to do this and it’s important to him. He has told us that. I ask him to do whatever he can and to do it as soon as possible to get an agreement secured and to get them all back.”

Shem Tov also believed he was freed because of Trump’s efforts. During their meeting in the Oval Office at the White House in March, Shem Tov said Trump told him “that I have a good future ahead of me.”

Shem Tov lost most than 50 pounds in captivity, he said. His food dwindled from just two pitas and some cheese daily at the beginning to a single biscuit.

However, he said his treatment at the hands of Hamas improved after Trump’s election, including receiving more food.

Hamas also “stopped cursing me, stopped spitting on me,” he said.

He frequently talked politics with his captors and said they wanted Kamala Harris to win the US election.

“As soon as Donald Trump was elected, they understood that he wants to bring the hostages back home,” Shem Tov said.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has blasted the country’s political leadership and the conduct of its military, saying he is no longer able to defend Israel against accusations of war crimes.

Olmert, who led the country from 2006-2009, pointed to Israel’s 11-week blockade of humanitarian aid into Gaza and the soaring number of Palestinians killed.

“What is it if not a war crime?” he asked rhetorically. He said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and far-right members of his government are “committing actions which can’t be interpreted any other way.”

Since the start of the war, Olmert has defended Israel abroad against accusations of genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza. When women and children were killed, Olmert said he told officials and interviewers that Israel would not deliberately target civilians.

But 19 months into a war Olmert says should have ended a year ago, he believes he can no longer make that case. “What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians,” he wrote in an op-ed in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper.

More than 54,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, including at least 28,000 women and children. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in January that it had killed more than 20,000 Hamas fighters.

“I think that we have to make sure that no uninvolved people in Gaza are hurt because of the expansion of these military operations, which is entirely unjustified and doesn’t serve any important interests of the state of Israel at this point,” Olmert said.

Olmert, who spent 16 months in prison on corruption charges, leveled most of his criticism at Netanyahu, as well as far-right ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.

Polls in Israel have repeatedly shown that most of the country supports a comprehensive ceasefire agreement that would see the release of the remaining 58 hostages held in Gaza and an end to the war. But Netanyahu has refused to commit to an end to the war, insisting that Israel’s expanding military campaign in Gaza will continue until the defeat of Hamas.

Like the hostage families, many of whom have given up on Netanyahu, Olmert placed his hope in US President Donald Trump to end the war. Trump, he said, is one of the only people who has the ability to compel Netanyahu to end the war.

“I really certainly think that he is the only person perhaps that can force the Israeli prime minister to come to terms with reality and with the moral reality of what is being accomplished by this government.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that a recent airstrike killed Mohammed Sinwar, Hamas’ elusive de facto leader in Gaza, the latest in a string of assassinations that have dealt a serious blow to the group’s top brass but are yet to break its grip on power.

Sinwar is the brother of former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who was killed by the Israeli military in southern Gaza in October.

Netanyahu made the announcement during a speech in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, as the country marked 600 days since the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023.

“We changed the face of the Middle East, we pushed the terrorists from our territories, we entered the Gaza Strip with force, we eliminated tens of thousands of terrorists, we eliminated (Mohammad) Deif, (Ismail) Haniyeh, Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Sinwar,” he told lawmakers.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) carried out a massive strike on the European Hospital in Khan Younis on May 13 — a day after Hamas released Israeli-American soldier Edan Alexander.

The strike killed several dozen people and wounded dozens more, the Palestinian health ministry in Gaza said at the time.

Hamas had rejected claims about Sinwar’s death at the time, saying in a statement that only it is “authorized to confirm or deny what is published.”

Sinwar’s death would deprive Hamas of an able and determined commander. But many analysts say it won’t bring the end of the conflict any closer. It may even complicate negotiations with Israel if a new leader doesn’t emerge and Hamas mediators are left without a Hamas interlocutor inside Gaza.

Israeli officials considered Mohammed Sinwar just as hardline as his brother, Yahya, but much more experienced militarily. According to the IDF, he commanded the group’s Khan Younis Brigade until 2016.

Since the start of the war, he has remained largely hidden, along with many of Hamas’ senior leaders in Gaza. In December 2023, the IDF released video of what it said was Mohammed Sinwar driving through a tunnel in Gaza. In February 2024, the IDF said it had located his office in western Khan Younis.

Netanyahu has vowed to continue the war until Israel has destroyed Hamas’ military capacity and ability to govern. To that end, Israel has gone after Hamas’ top leaders in Gaza, and Sinwar is the latest target.

In July, the IDF killed the group’s military leader, Mohammed Deif, in a strike on an Israeli-designated humanitarian zone in southern Gaza. Two weeks later, Israel assassinated Hamas’ political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran. Then, in October, Israeli forces killed Yahya Sinwar in Rafah in southern Gaza. His death left his younger brother, Mohammed, as the de facto leader of Hamas in Gaza, which put him squarely in Israel’s crosshairs.

Ever since his brother’s death, Sinwar had been pre-eminent among the leaders of Hamas’ military wing inside Gaza. He was intimately involved in the planning for Hamas’ October 7 attacks, which saw more than 1,200 people in Israel killed and another roughly 250 taken hostage. A video of him in the tunnels purportedly leading towards Israeli territory surfaced several weeks after the attacks.

By most accounts, Sinwar was ruthlessly determined to keep up the fight, despite the loss of thousands of fighters in Hamas military wing and the deepening suffering of Gaza’s civilians, as well as sporadic street protests in Gaza against Hamas.

Some commentators believe that Mohammed Sinwar lacked the broader authority enjoyed by Yahya. Haaretz security analyst Amos Harel writes that he shared “leadership responsibilities in Gaza with Az al-Din al-Haddad, a commander whose power base lies in the north of the Strip.”

Impact on ceasefire negotiations

Muhammad Shehada at the European Council on Foreign Relations says his death would complicate the negotiation process as Hamas reorganizes a shrinking leadership within Gaza. Without those leaders, he says, Hamas becomes more de-centralized and a ceasefire is more difficult to enforce.

Avi Issacharoff, a commentator with media outlet Ynet, says if Sinwar is dead “it may open the door for more pragmatic voices within Hamas’ leadership, such as Khalil al-Hayya and others currently involved in negotiations with Qatar and the Americans.”

The balance between that leadership and its negotiators abroad has always been hard to assess, but Shehada says the Hamas negotiators “perfectly represent the movement” and had already made countless concessions on a much-diminished post-conflict role, including allowing an international peacekeeping force and giving up governance.

“They are at their most lenient now” in the face of an Israeli government that is not prepared to negotiate beyond a temporary ceasefire, says Shehada.

There is plentiful evidence that Mohammed Sinwar was as hardline as his brother, perhaps even more so.

In a rare interview with Al Jazeera in 2021, Sinwar said: “We know how to identify the pain points of the occupation, how to pressure it.” He was speaking after Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) launched more than 4,000 rockets toward Israel.

Speaking in silhouette, Sinwar spoke of expanding Hamas’ ambitions.

“Tel Aviv has been placed on the table since the first day of the battle… Striking Tel Aviv is easier than taking a sip of water.”

By the time he was killed he had accumulated 30 years of military experience.

Living in the shadows

Sinwar was born in the Khan Younis refugee camp in 1975 and was first arrested for militant activities as a teenager. He became the leader of Hamas’ Khan Younis brigade and is said to have played a key role in the Hamas operation that captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2006, according to the Counter Extremism Project, and in insisting on his brother’s release from an Israeli prison in return for Shalit’s freedom.

Muhammad Shehada says Sinwar lived more in the shadows than his brother and others in Hamas’ leadership and had a more rigid security environment, almost to the point of paranoia.

“After an assassination attempt in 2003 he vanished, and did not take a public role in his father’s funeral” in 2022, according to Michael Barak, head of the Global Jihad Research Program at the International Institute for Counter Terrorism in Israel.

The evidence of the past few months suggests he was an able tactician. Time and again, the Israeli military had to return to areas of Gaza it had previously scoured for Hamas fighters.

While Hamas has lost as many as 20,000 fighters, according to an assessment by the Israeli military in January, it has maintained its presence in many parts of Gaza, even occasionally firing rockets towards Israel. In a report last month, the International Crisis Group think tank said that despite those losses, Hamas had managed to recruit thousands more fighters.

However, Shahada says that the Israeli campaign has seriously degraded Hamas and it is now more of a guerrilla group than a threat to its neighbor. Killing Sinwar won’t change that, he says.

Despite Sinwar’s death, Yaakov Amidror, a former National Security Advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said: “It is likely that we will need to continue fighting for at least a year, in order to clean the Strip of remnants of Hamas rule, terrorists, and infrastructure.” Only then, Amidror told the Jewish News Syndicate, could a new form of government be introduced to Gaza.

Shehada believes that Israel’s attempt to kill Sinwar the day after it released US-Israeli hostage Edan Alexander will “make it harder for Hamas to trust anything the mediators or the US says….It’s the perfect signal that no amount of guarantees from the mediators will suffice to enforce a ceasefire even if one is reached.”

But what happens in Gaza next may depend as much as on the pressure being exerted by Washington on the Israeli government to end the conflict as on the leadership of Hamas.

Amos Harel at Haaretz believes that “whether he lives or dies is no longer the central question. The course of the war now hinges on a different factor entirely: what (US) President (Donald) Trump does next – and whether he succeeds in imposing his terms on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”

A top Kremlin aide has accused Donald Trump of being “not sufficiently informed” about the situation in Ukraine after the US president said Russian leader Vladimir Putin was “playing with fire.”

Putin aide Yury Ushakov was reacting to Trump’s Truth Social post on Tuesday, in which the president said: “What Vladimir Putin doesn’t realize is that if it weren’t for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia, and I mean REALLY BAD. He’s playing with fire!”

Ushakov, a former Russian ambassador to Washington who was part of the negotiating team that Moscow sent to Saudi Arabia to meet US officials earlier this year, then questioned the accuracy of the information Trump receives.

“Trump says a lot of things. Naturally, we read and monitor all of this. But in many ways, we have come to the conclusion that Trump is not sufficiently informed about what is really happening in the context of the Russian-Ukrainian confrontation,” Ushakov told Russian state TV channel Russia-1.

Ushakov said that Trump appeared to be unaware of what he called “the increasingly frequent massive terrorist attacks Ukraine is carrying out against peaceful Russian cities,” and suggested Trump only sees Russia’s strikes, reiterating Moscow’s false claim that it is “striking exclusively at military infrastructure or the military-industrial complex.”

Ushakov’s remark – made to a favored Kremlin correspondent – came just after Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on the Trump statements during a call with reporters.

Far from striking only military targets, Russia has recently intensified its aerial campaign against civilian targets in Ukrainian cities.

Dozens of civilians have been killed by Russian drone and missile strikes against residential areas in the past few weeks.

At least 14 civilians, including three children from one family, were killed in Russian air attacks over the weekend.

The funeral for the three siblings – 8-year-old Stanislav Martynyuk, his sister Tamara, 12, and Roman, 17 – was held in their hometown of Korostyshiv in central Ukraine on Wednesday.

Hundreds of people, many in tears, filled the town square as their three white coffins were brought in. A local music school, where the trio studied, rang the “last bell” for them, a nod to the traditional long bell sounded for the graduating class at the end of their last school year.

After Russia launched the attack that killed the Martynyuk children, its largest ever aerial assault on Ukraine, Trump accused the Russian leader of having gone “absolutely CRAZY.”

“I’ve always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but something has happened to him. He has gone absolutely CRAZY! He is needlessly killing a lot of people, and I’m not just talking about soldiers. Missiles and drones are being shot into Cities in Ukraine, for no reason whatsoever,” Trump posted on Truth Social.

The spat between Trump and Moscow escalated on Tuesday when the former Russian president and prime minister-turned-security-official Dmitry Medvedev responded to Trump’s threat by saying: “I only know of one REALLY BAD thing — WWIII. I hope Trump understands this!”

Medvedev served as the head of state when Putin had to step down to become prime minister due to a constitutional limit on the number of presidential terms one can serve – a limit that has since been lifted, guaranteeing the possibility that Putin can be president for life.

As the former prime minister and president of Russia, Medvedev was once among the most influential Russian officials, but he has become an increasingly fringe figure in recent years, known mostly for social media outpourings of hate and propaganda.

Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia Keith Kellogg called Medvedev’s comments “reckless.”

“Stoking fears of WW III is an unfortunate, reckless comment,” he said on X, adding that the United States is still waiting for Russia’s ceasefire proposal.

A French court on Wednesday found a retired surgeon guilty of the rape and sexual assault of patients, some of them whilst under anesthetic, in a trial that has shaken France.

Joel Le Scouarnec had told the court he committed “despicable acts” over a 25-year period whilst he worked as doctor in western France, in a trial that has raised uncomfortable questions for the publicly run healthcare system.

Le Scouarnec, 74, was sentenced to 20 years in jail.

Le Scouarnec’s abuse of his patients, many them children at the time, is considered France’s worst case of pedocriminality to go to trial. He stood accused of aggravated rape or sexual assault against 299 victims.

“I’m aware that the harm I’ve caused is beyond repair,” Le Scouarnec told the opening of his trial in February.

“I owe it to all these people and their loved ones to admit my actions and their consequences, which they’ve endured and will keep having to endure all their lives,” he added.

The trial took place at a time of reckoning around sex crimes in France after the conviction of Dominique Pelicot, who was found guilty in December of drugging his wife unconscious and inviting dozens of men to their home to rape her.

Le Scouarnec is already serving jail time for earlier rape convictions. In 2020, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for the rape and sexual assault of a child neighbor, as well as his two nieces and a 4-year-old patient.

Victims and their families have publicly asked why local and national health authorities failed to stop Le Scouarnec. In 2005, he was convicted of downloading images of child sexual abuse and received a suspended jail sentence, but managed to continue working in public hospitals.

Decades of abuse

Several dozen victims and rights campaigners gathered outside the courthouse ahead of the verdict, holding a banner made of hundreds of pieces of white paper with black silhouettes, one for each victim. Some of the papers bore a first name and age, while others referred to the victim as “Anonymous.”

The extent of Le Scouarnec’s abuse was revealed after his re-arrest in 2017 on suspicion of raping his 6-year-old neighbor.

Police discovered electronic diaries that appeared to detail more than two decades of rapes and sexual assaults on young patients in hospitals across the region, as well as a cache of sex dolls, wigs and child pornography.

The trial took place in Vannes, a small town in Brittany.

The local prosecutor, whose office led the investigation into Le Scouarnec, has opened a separate investigation to ascertain if there was any criminal liability by agencies or individuals who could have prevented the abuse.