TEL AVIV — The Kirsht and Argamani families have shared a lot over the past awful months: both had daughters kidnapped by Hamas militants on Oct. 7; both have a parent battling the final stages of cancer; both pleaded to see their child before it’s too late.

Now they find themselves in very different categories. The Kirshts are among the families that had a joyous reunion during the flurry of hostage releases in late November. The Argamanis are not.

None of the families are whole. Released hostage Rimon Kirsht Buchshtav, 36, did get to see her father, who has leukemia, struggle up from his wheelchair for a hug. But her husband, Yagev Buchshtav, remains in Hamas captivity. The house they built together in Kibbutz Nirim was destroyed.

Former captives have emerged to learn of tragedies unknown - parents or children killed by Hamas, communities wiped off the map. Some have seen their health deteriorate since the helicopter ride from the Gaza border. But when the tenuous one-week pause in combat ended abruptly Dec. 1, it created an invisible divide in the coalition of hostage relatives: between the 110 reunited families, and the 136 that watched with dread as the war resumed with their loved ones still inside.

“That Friday devastated us,” said Ravid Ohad, whose cousin Noa Argamani was seen on video being driven into Gaza on a motorcycle, screaming “Don’t kill me!” Argamani’s mother Lior, battling Stage 4 brain cancer, has pleaded with Hamas to let her see her only child as a dying wish. She started a course of experimental drugs, trying to buy more time.

“We were finally hopeful that if the cease-fire could just continue for another 48 hours or so, we would have Noa finally at home like the other hostages,” Ohad said.

The split has been hard on both sides. The families of the freed have been careful, in almost every public statement, to note that the crisis isn’t over until everyone is home. Relatives of released captives - all elderly women, mothers and children - have continued to speak out, and to appear at vigils and weekly protests in Tel Aviv. Several took part in a torch-lit march on the Israeli parliament Tuesday, calling for the government to reengage in talks and pause the fighting for another round of releases.

These families say their relief is tempered by survivor’s guilt. The returnees had stories of the horrific conditions they endured, which those in the tunnels are probably still enduring: tales of sexual assault against women and men alike, untreated injuries, airless confinement.

At least five hostages have been declared dead based on their reports. In some cases, those returning said they were made to share subterranean spaces with the bodies.

“It’s so much shame coming back,” said Sharone Lifshitz, whose 85-year-old mother Yocheved Lifshitz was among the first hostages released. “We still have 83- and 84-year-old people that are there and they’re just dying.”

Among those left behind is Sharone’s own father, Oded, 83, with an injured hand and without his medication. “We are petrified,” she said. “One thing we know is that other elderly people have died due to the neglect and unsuitable conditions. We know so much now.”

The hostage families have been categorized from the beginning, in groups where hopes of release were higher or lower.

The families of elderly women, young mothers and children were always considered the most likely to be freed. Fathers, young men and women of military age, like most of those taken captive at the Supernova dance festival, are thought to be next on the list in any deal.

Families of Israeli soldiers taken from their posts Oct. 7 know they are the least likely to be reunited. “Every night [during the pause] it was another heartbreak when we saw all the names but not hers,” said the sister of an Israeli soldier held by Hamas. “But we know they hate the soldiers most. I’m happy for every family that got someone, but it is hard to keep hoping we will be one of them.”

The woman spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity to keep her sister from being singled out by her captors. Some families say they have been advised by the government and other counselors not give interviews about their loved ones. Those with relatives still in Gaza feel doubly constrained, the soldier’s sister said.

The accounts from the tunnels were even worse than they had feared, the relative of a released hostage told The Post, but were unlikely to be made public until all hostages are freed.

“The stories I am hearing right now are so horrible,” the family member said, speaking on the condition of anonymity for privacy reasons. “One day there are going to be movies about it like the Holocaust, like ‘Schindler’s List.’”

Not every family agrees with the calls by some relatives for an “all-for-all” bargain in which Israel would agree to empty its jails of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the captive Israelis. Not every family supports another pause in the fighting, as bombs rain down on Gazans and hostages alike.

Tzvika Mor, who lives on a settlement near Hebron, in the occupied West Bank, has led calls for continuing the war until Hamas is destroyed, no matter the cost to the captives. Among them is his son Eitan, taken by Hamas as he tried to rescue people at the dance party.

“If I have to choose between the love of my son and the love of the nation, I choose the love of the nation,” Mor said in an interview on Israeli television.

In this still-devastated country, after an attack that killed more than 1,200 Israelis, amid a war that has claimed the lives of more than 100 soldiers and 18,000 Gazans, some families are left yearning for news. Others are trying to ease their traumatized loved ones back into a new normal. Nothing will ever be as it was for any of them.

The Argamanis have gotten word that Noa is alive. For her mother, that makes the waiting - for another pause, for a diplomatic breakthrough, for any sign of her daughter - both more hopeful and more agonizing.

“My heart hurts the most, more than the cancer,” Lior, 61, said Tuesday at her temporary apartment in Tel Aviv. “I believe she will come home.”

For the Kirshts, the return of Rimon was a welcome shock. Her parents traveled each day to the hostage family vigil in Tel Aviv after Nahum’s chemotherapy. “I’m fighting both cancer and Hamas,” he told The Post. But she wasn’t in one the favored categories.

“No way,” Nahum said in an interview at the vigil two nights before she was released. “She is not a kid, she is not a mother, and she is not old. She is 36.”

Still, he had begun physical therapy in the hope he would be strong enough to greet her if a miracle brought her home. On Nov. 28, the fifth day of hostage releases, it did.

Rimon was led into a special hospital room, where her sister hugged her and handed her a new pair of glasses, replacing the ones she had lost when militants dragged her to Gaza. Her first clear vision in 53 days was her father rising from his chair and opening his arms to embrace her.