On Sunday night, some 12 hours before Omri Miran was set to be released from captivity in Gaza after 737 days, his daughters Roni, 4, and Alma, 2, were glowing with joy, standing in pink shirts and braided hair next to two suitcases, in a picture shared by their mother, Lishay Miran-Lavi.
“Prepared and ready for Daddy Omri,” Miran-Lavi wrote on X, as she shared the picture.
Earlier in the day, Miran’s father, Dani, said that the last 24 hours waiting for his son to come home were “easy.”
“During this year, there have been things that were much harder,” he said in an interview with 103FM radio. “I know it’s going to happen, so why make it difficult?”
Omri and Lishay Miran from Kibbutz Nir Oz; Omri was taken captive by Hamas terrorists to Gaza on October 7, 2023 (Courtesy)
Miran is one of the 20 living hostages set to be released early Monday morning as part of a deal between Israel and Hamas to release all the captives still held in the Strip by Palestinian terror groups. The first phase of the deal also includes the release of the bodies of 28 slain hostages, after a partial IDF withdrawal from Gaza, and the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners (250 terrorists serving life sentences and 1,700 Palestinians arrested after October 7).
Miran was taken captive from Kibbutz Nahal Oz during the Hamas onslaught of October 7, 2023, after terrorists forced the family to open the door by threatening to shoot a neighbor in the head. Shortly before Omri was taken away, Lavi told him “not to be a hero. I love you, and I’ll take care of the girls. I’ll wait for you.”
Dani Miran, father of hostage Omri Miran, speaks at a rally outside the Prime Minister’s Residence in Jerusalem on September 19, 2025. (Ran Melamed/Hostages and Missing Families Forum)
Since then, the Mirans have been among the most vocal voices of the hostage family movement.
Asked whether he desired to return to anonymity, Dani said he did. “I would like to return to anonymity and to my natural environment, [but] I am a symbol,” he said.
As the hours of the day drew on, the excitement among hostage relatives, former hostages, and the whole country grew.
A video shared by the Kan public broadcaster showed family members of hostage Segev Kalfon folding clothes and arranging some bags for him, as they made their final preparations.
ממתינים לשובו: משפחתו של שגב כלפון בהכנות אחרונות וקיפול בגדים לקראת שחרורו@AnnaPines_ @YCiechanover
(צילום: באדיבות המשפחה) pic.twitter.com/S8DmHfuTPo— כאן חדשות (@kann_news) October 12, 2025
Rivkah, the wife of hostage Elkana Bohbot, also shared a clip with some suitcases and a present for her husband, the legs of their young son Re’em, 5, briefly visible in the video.
רבקה, אשתו של אלקנה בוחבוט, פרסמה תיעוד מההכנות לשובו@YCiechanover
(צילום: באדיבות המשפחה) pic.twitter.com/68z6JheCiE— כאן חדשות (@kann_news) October 12, 2025
In another clip shared by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum on Instagram, Re’em was seen pushing two suitcases, explaining that they were full of “Dad’s things.”
Both Kalfon and Bohbot were kidnapped from the Nova festival.
A video aired by Channel 12 showed Einav Zangauker and Ilana Gritzewsky preparing together a suitcase for Matan Zangauker, Einav’s son and Ilana’s partner. Matan and Ilana were kidnapped together from Kibbutz Nir Oz. Gritzewsky was released in the first hostage deal in November 2023.
“I feel hope and excitement, but I also try to block them in me so I won’t break if it does not happen,” former hostage Tal Shoham said during a virtual press conference, sitting next to Ilan Dalal, the father of hostage Guy Gilboa-Dalal.
Former hostage Tal Shoham, left, and Ilan Dalal, father of hostage Guy Gilboa-Dalal, address journalists over Zoom on October 12, 2025. (Screenshot/Amplify)
“I want to thank [US] President [Donald] Trump for making the impossible possible,” he added.
Shoham was kidnapped from Kibbutz Be’eri with his wife, Adi Shoham, their daughter, Yahel, 3, and son, Naveh, 8, as well as his mother-in-law, Shoshan Haran, his wife’s aunt, Sharon Avigdori, and her daughter, Noam, 12. The women and children were released in November 2023, and Shoham in February 2025.
He spent most of his captivity with Gilboa-Dalal and Evyatar David, who were taken captive from the Nova festival. Since his release, he has been active in advocating for the release of the hostages still in Gaza, and especially of his companions, sharing their experience and details of their horrific conditions in Hamas’s tunnels.
“Most of my time in captivity, I was starved with Guy and Evyatar to the extent of [receiving only] 200 or 300 calories a day,” Shoham said.
“There were times that I saw with my own eyes that [my captors] stole boxes and boxes and boxes of humanitarian aid from Egypt, from Turkey, from the Emirates, but they didn’t agree to give us any of this food in the tunnels,” he added.
The former hostage recalled how the terrorists bragged about stealing aid and having supplies for months, while wanting the Israeli hostages to suffer like the Palestinians in Gaza.
“They used to brag that they stole the humanitarian aid and they had supplies from months ahead,” he said. “They actually confessed one time that they were starving us, first, so we would suffer as their people were suffering, although they stole the humanitarian aid, and second, so that Israeli society would see our pictures.”
Hostages Evyatar David (left) and Guy Gilboa-Dalal speak in a Hamas propaganda video filmed at the site and time of the release ceremony in Gaza for three other captives, February 22, 2025. (Screenshot: Telegram)
At the same time, during the press conference organized by Amplify, a group that describes its mission as “strengthening Israel in the global fight against extremism,” Shoham stressed that he did not seek revenge.
“Personally, I don’t need Hamas to [be] completely destroyed so I will feel good, but I do think that for us to feel safe again as a nation, and for the Palestinians to have a real opportunity for a good life, Hamas needs to be eradicated, or at least give up their weapons,” he said.
If the terror group were eradicated, he added, “other Palestinians, together with the international community, will be able to rule and rebuild Gaza, build a new future for the Palestinians, and maybe there will even be peace between Israel and the Palestinians.”
Einav Zangauker (right), mother of hostage Matan Zangauker, and released hostage Ilana Gritzewsky, Matan’s partner, address protesters at Hostages Square in Tel Aviv, October 4, 2025. (Paulina Patimer / Hostages and Missing Families Forum)
Ilan Dalal said he was eager to see his son, a scenario that he said “played through my mind many times.”
“The first thing I’m going to do is hug him, smell him, and tell him that the nightmare is over,” he said.
At the same time, he told reporters he was worried about the physical and psychological toll of captivity.
“We know Guy as he was two years ago, but after he went through two years of suffering, of starvation, of humiliation, of both physical and mental abuse, we don’t know how these things are going to affect him,” Dalal said. “I don’t know what kind of son I’m going to get back, and I hope that he won’t be so harmed that he can’t rebuild his life.”
Hostage Omri Miran’s children record a message to US President Donald Trump on March 10, 2025. (Screen capture/X)
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum has announced that the Hostage Square in Tel Aviv will be open and active all night, starting from midnight, waiting for the hostages to be released.
“I want to say one last thing to the people of Israel,” Dani Miran said in the 103FM radio interview. “I do not know what time Hamas is going to release the hostages, but the moment they come back, come to the square, even at 4 a.m.”
