Oded Lifshitz, an 84-year-old from Kibbutz Nir Oz who is set to be released in the first phase of the hostage deal, had an unclouded vision of what could happen if Israeli-Palestinian divisions festered to a point beyond return.
“When the Palestinians have nothing to lose, we will lose, big time,” Lifshitz wrote some years ago in Haaretz. “The question is, what do we do then?”
Now, his family fears that he has been lost to the tunnels of Gaza.
“It’s hard to think about someone you love suffering so much,” his daughter Sharone Lifshitz told the Jerusalem Report in August 2024. “In some ways, it would be a blessing if he no longer had to experience such distress.”She told the Associated Press on Friday that she was ready for an unhappy outcome: “I have to say that we are prepared.’’
Lifshitz was kidnapped alongside his wife, Yocheved Lifshitz, 82, from their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz. He was shot in his hand and was lying at the edge of his property the last time his wife saw him.
His wife, Yocheved, was put on the back of a motorbike and was driven to Gaza, her burning house behind her.
“They put gas into the house, and it burned, and it burned, and it burned until everything they ever owned, everything, was ashes,” Sharone said.
Yocheved Lifshitz was one of the very first hostages to be released on October 24, 2023, after 17 days. She was held separately from her husband, so was unable to give any information about his condition
The status of all the hostages set to be released as part of the first phase of the hostage-ceasefire deal remains unclear at this time.
A lifetime of activism
Daniel Lifshitz, the couple’s grandson, told Reuters that his grandparents were part of an association called Road to Recovery that helped Palestinians cross the Erez border in order to receive treatments in Israeli hospitals. “They have been human rights activists, peace activists for all their lives,” he said.
Lifshitz, a lifelong peacenik and Palestinian rights advocate, worked for years for Al HaMishmar before his retirement. He reported extensively on the Bedouin in Israel and reportedly took a case to the High Court, which resulted in the return of some of their land, AP reported.
Because of his experience in activism and his connections to the Arab world, his daughter said that he was more than aware of how destructive jihadist forces were.
“My father had friends in Gaza and the West Bank, and he knew many Palestinian people. He knew what Hamas was,” Sharone told the Jerusalem Report. She also said that her father was aware and afraid of the very tunnels he is currently captive in.
“Hamas is responsible for the war, but the amount of suffering serves no one,” she said. “The objectives can’t be reached, so why are we still there?”
Sharone also told the Jerusalem Report that she wishes that a deal to release her parents had been reached much sooner.
“Israel wasted a lot of goodwill because, in the beginning, we had opportunities to release them that were wasted,” she said. “We know there were deals on the table, and if Israel had agreed, [the hostages would be home].”
“So many people were killed who should have been alive if they did not sabotage this deal,” she told the AP. “I hope that they know they will have to live with that for the rest of their life, and we will remind them.”
With her father’s impending release, Sharone asked the public for patience and empathy.
“We are about to receive our loved ones after so long where we were unable to love and care for them,” she told the AP. “There’s so much trauma. I think people have to have a little softness toward it all, just feel it a bit in their hearts.
“I think feeling the pain of others is the start of building something better.”