Reuters
- A freed Israeli hostage held in Hamas tunnels described her 55-day captivity to Business Insider.
- Nili Margalit said she got to shower only once a week with cold water and was always hungry.
- "I know for a fact that it's getting worse and worse and worse every day," she said of those left.
An Israeli hostage held underground by Hamas said the conditions in the tunnels were so bad that she would always be hungry and got to shower only once a week, with cold water.
Nili Margalit, 41, was taken hostage during Hamas' October 7 terrorist attacks on Israel.
She was among the more than 100 hostages recently freed under a cease-fire deal.
Margalit described her 55-day ordeal to Business Insider's Spriha Srivastava at Davos last month.
"It took me a while to understand this surreal, surreal situation," she said. "The first couple of days were about adjusting — not eating and needing to ask to go to the bathroom."
She said that Hamas militants gave them "one meal a day, like a small bowl of rice," and that showers in cold water were a weekly occurrence at best.
Margalit, a nurse at a local hospital, said hygiene was "so poor" that there were cases of "gastrointestinal conditions" among the hostages, and that medication was so scarce that they weren't able to treat chronic illnesses.
During her captivity, she said she also saw about five to six cages with locks on them in the tunnels.
Hamas militants "always threatened us that they would lock us down in the cage if we did not behave," she said.
She declined to describe them further over fears that Hamas fighters might read this story and hurt the hostages.
"I can only speak for the first 55 days, not for the days that I was not there," she said, but added that "it's getting worse and worse and worse every day — they're hungry, they're sick."
Business Insider also spoke with Noam Peri, whose 79-year-old father, Haim Peri, was also taken hostage on October 7.
He is still being held captive, and his family fears for his life.
"Everything is a danger for the hostages; for people like my father's age, it could be any little thing," Peri said. "They can get the flu and die there. They could fall."
Peri added that reporters who have gone into the tunnels said that after an hour, it was impossible to breathe. "So how can the hostages be there for 102 days? They could die any minute."
Reuters
Relatives of the hostages have held protests, calling on Israeli authorities to do more to release their loved ones. Twenty individuals stormed a parliamentary committee in Jerusalem on January 22, per Reuters.
Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu has pledged to secure the freedom of all the hostages, regardless of their age, gender, or military status.
He also said the protests don't help and only "hardens Hamas' demands and delays the results that we all want," The Jerusalem Post reported.
During a temporary cease-fire in November, Hamas released 105 hostages. Israel says there are still 132 missing, of whom about 27 are now thought to be dead.