After nearly a year of waiting to meet the man in charge of hostage deal negotiations, families from the Tikva Forum for relatives of hostages and the fallen have finally met Minister Ron Dermer.
The families left the meeting frustrated, and Channel 12 News reported that they sent a sharp letter to Dermer following the meeting.
"We left the meeting with you fuming, belittled, confused, and exhausted," representatives of the families wrote in their letter, which was published Thursday evening.
In their meeting, the families understood that the time frame for the hostages' release under a deal ranges between three and six months. The families of hostages Eitan Mor and Avinatan Or were told that the current efforts at a deal are intended to apply pressure so that Hamas agrees to a partial deal.
"We understood the painful and cynical principle: Those who have, throughout the entire time, backed the Prime Minister, those who have offered support and strength - are in his pocket anyways. With us, they will meet before signing a partial deal," they wrote. "Our loved ones who were taken hostage have been abandoned to the horrors, and will wait patiently and politely for their bitter end. We reiterate and warn: Do not dare discriminate between the blood of the hostages. Do not dare give preference to the lives of selected hostages at the expense of the lives of others. You have no permission to give in and compromise on our loved ones' lives. There must only be all of them - together."
They added, "You dumped tons and tons of details on us, which we are not at all interested in, and there is no chance that we will remember them, especially in light of our very unsettled mental state. Unsettled - thanks to you as well. To your failures, and your failed management of the failure and us."
"You began an endless verbal attack, that hardly any of us got anything at all out of. And all three of us are not stupid. The few words which we managed to get in were said in impolite outbursts, as you said. If we hadn't been impolite, maybe we wouldn't have managed to say even that little bit."
The families added, "Choosing this strategy expresses deep contempt of us as people, of us as broken-hearted parents, of our little strength, and of our time, which was completely wasted. For nearly two years you have told us in great and irritating detail about the stages of the fighting and the agreements since the start of the war. As more hours passed after our meeting ended, we understood the scope of the disaster."
"Whoever did not leave in the current, small group is abandoned to his fate in the depths of the horrors. We did not understand from you that there is any operational offer for how you will succeed in bringing them home and when. As per our request, you gave an estimate of a time frame of between three and six months, but without a plan of action. In the past two weeks, we have had a supportive string of meetings and discussions with leaders in the system. Instead of calming us, this process has greatly worried us," they concluded.