Two Israeli hostages return after a decade in Gaza

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Among the six hostages freed by Hamas on Saturday in return for Palestinian prisoners were an Israeli Bedouin and an Ethiopian-born man who had been in Gaza for years before the October 7, 2023 attack, having wandered into the enclave a decade ago.

Civilians Hisham al-Sayed, 36, and Avera Mengistu, 39, both had a history of mental illness, according to comments from their families and a 2017 report from Human Rights Watch.

Mengistu, who was born in Ethiopia and lived in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon, crossed a barbed wire fence near a beach in Gaza in September 2014, while Sayed, a Bedouin with Israeli citizenship who lived in the Negev desert, walked into Gaza from the east in April 2015.    

"Our family has endured ten years and five months of unimaginable suffering. During this time, there have been continuous efforts to secure his return, with prayers and pleas, some silent, that remained unanswered until today," Mengistu's family said in a statement.

Although Hamas at one time described them as soldiers, Human Rights Watch said neither was connected to the Israeli government or the military but that both men were accustomed to walking long distances on foot. It's not known why they entered Gaza.

"Why were they holding someone like that who did nothing wrong? He's a man of peace, a man who wanted to reach Gaza, he loves Gaza, he did not go there as an aggressor," Sayed's father Shaaban al-Sayed told Israeli public radio this week. "This was more painful for us than everything else." 

For years, almost nothing was known about their condition until Hamas released videos of Sayed, lying in bed with an oxygen mask in June 2022, and of Mengistu in January 2023, in an apparent effort to pressure Israel into swapping them for Palestinian prisoners.

In addition to Sayed and Mengistu, Hamas also held the bodies of two Israeli soldiers killed in the 2014 Gaza war. One, Oron Shaul, was recovered by Israeli troops in Gaza last month, while the other, Hadar Goldin, is still in the hands of Hamas.

(Reporting by James Mackenzie; Editing by Aidan Lewis and Sharon Singleton)