British hostage Emily Damari will be released as part of the deal between Israel and Hamas, Israeli media reports.
The 28-year-old has been held in Gaza since she was shot in the hand and leg when snatched from her home in southern Israel during the October 7 attack by Hamas.
Under a deal finally agreed this week, 33 hostages are expected to be released, including women, ‘children, elderly people, as well as civilian ill people and wounded’.
A list of names circulating Israeli media includes men, women and children. Hamas has not indicated their condition.
Israel’s security cabinet will meet to vote on a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal today, with the expectation a truce could come into effect as soon as Sunday.
The deal is expected to pass despite backlash from hard-right members of the coalition, who say Hamas must be fully vanquished before a deal is made.
Hostages are expected to be released on Sunday from 4pm if the agreement passes.
Emily was in her own flat in the kibbutz when Hamas led an incursion into southern Israel, killing some 1,170 people and taking 251 hostage.
Hostages released in the November 2023 truce told her mother, Mandy, how her daughter showed ‘bravery and courage’, singing ‘It’s a Great Morning’ every morning ‘despite the darkness’.
Ms Damari spoke at the official anniversary event commemorating the October 7 massacre in Hyde Park, London a year after Hamas’ deadly incursion, addressing a large crowd who had turned out in support.
Speaking publicly for the first time about her daughter, she said that she felt like her daughter had been ‘forgotten’ in captivity.
For more than a year, protestors have gathered in Israel and around the world to call for favourable terms to a deal that would see the release of hostages remaining in Gaza.
Some 94 are believed to still be in the beleaguered Palestinian enclave, including the 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
The deal under review by the Israeli security cabinet is the closest the hostages have come to a deal for their collective release since the November 2023 truce.
If approved, it could set the tone for a move towards the terms for a permanent end to the war after 15 months of conflict.