JERUSALEM (Reuters) – A nurse who was amongst scores of Israelis kidnapped to Gaza says she spent her captivity in an underground tunnel, treating aged fellow hostages, some onerous of sight or listening to, with meager medical provides for which she needed to haggle with Hamas. .
Nili Margalit was repatriated in a November truce between Israel and Hamas. Interviewed by native TV, she mentioned Palestinian civilians had seized her from her village and “offered” her to the Islamist gunmen who led the Oct 7 rampage that triggered a warfare.
Unaware that her father, together with some 1,200 different folks, had been killed, Margalit, 41, was bundled barefoot right into a stifling Hamas tunnel the place, she says, hostages had been rounded up, bearing quite a lot of accidents from their tough dealing with.
“We have been in a state of shock,” she informed Channel 12 TV.
But utilizing fundamental Arabic discovered within the emergency room of a southern Israeli hospital which has Bedouin sufferers, Margalit knowledgeable the Hamas captors that she was a nurse. They agreed to her provide to take cost of hostages’ medical wants.
“There have been sick folks. They had power diseases,” she mentioned. “There weren’t sufficient tablets. There wasn’t sufficient meals.”
The privation supplied stopgaps, nonetheless. Near-starvation meant untreated diabetes-sufferers have been spared hyperglycemia. Given just one strip of antibiotics, Margalit determined to put it aside and as an alternative dressed a wound with honey to counter irritation.
Getting new provides required common negotiation with Hamas captors, together with some she described as senior Palestinian officers who would examine the hostages and converse in Hebrew.
“I bugged them, doing it with what you would possibly name a bit of excellent grace,” she mentioned, recalling how she warned the captors that among the hostages might succumb to their diseases. “That scared them. They did not need these folks to die.”
Several aged feminine hostages have been launched together with Margalit, in a deal through which Israel freed scores of Palestinian prisoners. Elderly males stay among the many 132 hostages nonetheless in Gaza – 25 of whom have died, based on Israeli officers. Hamas has mentioned a few of them have been killed by shelling of Gaza and, early within the warfare, additionally threatened to execute hostages themselves.
Margalit mentioned she believed medical provides have run out, by now. “We know that we have been in tunnels, and we all know that the warfare is at present being fought above the place we have been held,” she mentioned.
Among Margalit’s fellow hostages was Yarden Bibas, who was seized individually from his spouse Shiri and their two younger boys, Ariel and Kfir. Such was his consternation about his household’s destiny that the Palestinian captors informed him, falsely, that his spouse and sons had been noticed again in Israel, Margalit mentioned.
Then Hamas modified tack, telling Bibas that Shiri, Ariel and Kfir had been killed in an Israeli air strike in Gaza – and recording his traumatized response in a video that was aired.
When the captors bought irritated, their punishment of hostages included limiting the variety of hours of illumination of their underground cells or using air flow followers, Margalit mentioned.
After 40 days’ captivity, she was allowed to look at some TV information, and would relay the knowledge by shouting into the ears of aged hostages who couldn’t comply with the experiences themselves as that they had been taken captive with out glasses or listening to aids.
Hamas blamed the dearth of meals and drugs on Israel’s Gaza offensive, Margalit mentioned: “We started to really feel that Israel had forsaken us, once more” after failing to stop the Oct. 7 assaults.
The tranquilisers and sleeping tablets that Hamas equipped, at her request, helped hostages racked by lengthy nights of fear.
“I wished to settle down. I wished it for myself. I believed I might go loopy at any second,” she mentioned.