A Divided Israel Unites in Joy as Hostages Come Home

Many of them had become household names, their faces familiar from posters all over the country: Israelis snatched two years ago from their homes in pastoral border villages, from a music festival rave and from army bases and then secreted into Hamas’s tunnels deep under Gaza.

When they finally emerged on Monday as part of a cease-fire deal reached between Israel and Hamas, they were thinner, wan, but alive and on their feet. And Israelis basked in a joyous moment of unifying national redemption after years of agonizing, polarizing war.