MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
For more than 470 days, Israeli and American and Palestinian families have been waiting - waiting for family members and loved ones to come home to them. Now with the ceasefire in Gaza holding so far, prisoner-for-hostage exchanges are underway. The International Committee of the Red Cross helps facilitate these swaps, and here to talk through how they work and how they're going is Jacob Kurtzer, spokesman for the Red Cross and on the line from Tel Aviv. Welcome.
JACOB KURTZER: Thank you for having me.
KELLY: So as I understand it, the Red Cross works to facilitate the transfer both of Israeli hostages who have been held by Hamas, also of Palestinian prisoners who've been held by Israel. Is that right?
KURTZER: That's correct. Our role in the ongoing agreement is to implement the agreement that the parties themselves signed. In all these matters, our job is to act at the request of the parties and to facilitate the safe release and transfer of both the hostages and the detainees.
KELLY: Let's start with the first group, the hostages who've been held by Hamas. How many have you been working with, and how has it been going?
KURTZER: Since the most recent ceasefire agreement has been signed, there have been two hostage release efforts - the first in which three people were released and transferred by our colleagues back to their homes, and the second in which four people were released and transferred to their homes.
KELLY: And take us inside the operation. Who's there from the Red cross?
KURTZER: What you see may look like a drive, but it requires a lot of preparation and a lot of technical planning and considerations. The situation in Gaza - many of the roads have been destroyed. There is an expectation that there still remains unexploded ordnance around. We know that these individuals have experienced a lot of trauma and so we always make sure, to the best of our abilities, that we have doctors on hand who can apply any necessary immediate medical care. And we consider the fact that when they see us, it can be a very difficult moment for them.
KELLY: Yeah. As you nod to, in such a fast-moving situation, you must be having to adjust on the fly when you get there and the conditions are not what you thought they were going to be. Do you also have security personnel there?
KURTZER: No. I think that's a really important point that you raise. We are unarmed, and we operate again with the consent of the parties. And we achieve this consent through what we call bilateral and confidential dialogue. We're in constant communication with everyone. So our colleagues are unarmed. We have people on our staff who are security experts who assess environments and make determinations, but we don't have a security escort in the way that you might be thinking. And so, again, our ability to influence or impact the means or the manner in which release transfer takes place is really quite limited.
KELLY: So meanwhile, the Red Cross is also coordinating the near-simultaneous release of Palestinian detainees who've been held in Israel. And I gather, in some ways, that is more complex. How so?
KURTZER: Well, each operation is complex in its own unique and special way. Again, as the request of the parties and with the consent of the parties, we have been asked to facilitate the return of detainees from places of detention to different authorities. The complexity is for us there are a variety of different places they go, and so we have to be prepared, again, not necessarily knowing all the details until very close to the last minute, to ensure that we have the equipment, the vehicles, the personnel, the staff and the medical support as well, to carry out those detention releases.
KELLY: Jacob Kurtzer, communications coordinator with the International Red Cross, speaking with us there from Tel Aviv. Thank you.
KURTZER: Thank you.
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