Hostage Tamir Nimrodi’s mother says her fate is unknown while she is waiting for Trump’s peace plan

The mother of an Israeli man taken by Hamas on October 7, 2023 says that she still does not know if her son is dead or alive, but has “real hope” that the peace plan of the American president Donald Trump will bring the return of all the hostages held in Gaza.

Herut Nimrodi told BBC News that she “feared the worst” for her son Tamir, a soldier who was not fighting, but she clung to hope that he “always clings” two years after his abduction.

She said he was the only Israeli hostage whose family had not been informed if they were alive or dead.

The peace plan, proposed by President Trump, has grown, with indirect talks now between Hamas and Israel to end the war and return the hostages.

“They have been trying to create an agreement for some time, but that has not taken off. This time, it’s different,” said Nimrodi. “There is a real hope that it is this one, it is the last matter.”

She said it was particularly important that all the hostages – living and dead – were released in the first phase of the plan.

“It’s huge, it’s a blessing for us,” she said.

“It is urgent to release the hostages – those who are still alive, and even those who have passed. We do not know which emissions from their bodies. We must release them so that families have a kind of closure. Even families who have received the message that their loved ones died, they do not accept it because they need proof.”

Tamir is one of the 47 hostages kidnapped on October 7 which remain in Gaza – 20 of them are still alive.

The last time she saw her son was in a video of her abduction published on social networks on October 7, 2023.

“My youngest daughter – she was 14 at the time – came to shout that she had seen her brother kidnapped on Instagram,” she recalls.

“I saw Tamir carry his pajamas. He was barefoot. He had no glasses. He can barely see without them. He was terrified.”

Since she saw her son – an education manager in the Israeli army who was 18 years old at the time – forced in a jeep and chased, “vanishing in Gaza”, she has not received any signs of life.

“He is the only Israeli without any indication of what happened or where he is exactly,” she said.

The fate of a Nepalese hostage, Bipin Joshi, is also unknown.

Like other families to which the BBC spoke to whom relatives were killed or kidnapped that day, Ms. Nimrodi said that life had been frozen for two years.

“People ask me:” It’s been two years, how do you stand? “And I say,” It doesn’t look like two years.

That day, two years ago, was the deadliest in the history of Israel, when some 1,200 people were killed by men armed in Hamas and other groups, and 251 others took hostage, most of the communities in the South and a music festival.

The attacks sparked a war in which more than 67,000 people in Gaza were killed by Israeli military action, according to the Hamas Ministry of Hamas in the territory. Almost the entire population has been moved and a large part of its flattened infrastructure.

Nimrodi said she was at home near Tel Aviv when she received a message from Tamir early October 7, 2023 from her post to the north side of the Gaza border.

“He said” there are rockets and it’s non-stop “”, she recalls.

Tamir told him that he would soon return to the family home, as he would usually do for such moments because of his role as non-combat.

“I told him to take good care of him and send me an SMS every time he can and he said he would try. It was the last words between us. It was 06:49 in the morning, and I discovered these 20 minutes later after our last message, he was taken,” she said.

She made lobbying for the return of her son, including during rallies with other hostage families.

But she said there were also days when she “can’t get out of bed”.

“I try to listen to my body-what can I do? What strength do I have?”

The momentum behind the peace plan brought a certain hope for the remaining hostage families that their loved ones could soon have returned home.

Ms. Nimrodi joined tens of thousands of people – including the hostages of the hostages and former hostages themselves – who had gathered in Tel Aviv on Saturday evening to ask for the agreement.

She wore a t-shirt with her son’s photo on the front, smiling and glasses.

“I believe in this agreement, and I believe that Trump will not let it escape,” she said, when she called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “do the right thing-bringing the hostages home and bringing peace to this region”.

She said that when she had tried to sleep that night, she would be met with the “terrified look” in the eyes of her son when he was kidnapped, who plays in her head every day.

“Hope for two years – it’s absolutely exhausting.”