Following the IDF confirmation on Monday that hostage Yagev Buchshtab was killed in Gaza, his mother, Esther Buchshtab, spoke of the initial optimism regarding the hostage deal in an interview with KAN on Tuesday.
Buchshtab told KAN that the news of her son's death was received with sadness, saying, "We hoped so much that, despite the difficulty and horror, the story would end differently."
Yagev Buchshtab's wife, Rimon, was released in the first hostage release deal of November.
Buchshtab's mother shared with KAN that optimism began to fade, saying, "We understood that it was very difficult and bad there [in Hamas captivity], and their optimism gave us hope, but the more the state forgot and abandoned them, the more we feared."