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Israel Bedouin Calls For Release Of Relatives Held Hostage
By AFP - Agence France Presse
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A relative of two Israeli Arab Bedouins held hostage by Hamas in Gaza has pleaded for their release, saying they had "nothing to do" with the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group.
"I urge all who can to help free my brother Youssef and my nephew Hamza because they are sick and have nothing to do with this," Noaf al-Zayadna said late Wednesday on a visit to Paris facilitated by the Israeli embassy.
Hamas launched an unprecedented attack against Israel on October 7, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking around 240 hostages, of whom 105 have been released and several killed, according to Israeli officials.
In retaliation, Israel launched an offensive that has killed at least 18,787 people, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run health ministry in the besieged Palestinian territory.
Among the hostages still believed to be held in Gaza are at least three Israeli Arab Bedouins, members of a small traditionally nomadic minority whose Palestinian ancestors remained on their land after Israel's creation in 1948.
Four members of a single Bedouin family from the area of Rahat in the Negev Desert were taken hostage on October 7 as they were working on a farm in Kibbutz Holit, near the border with Gaza.
Youssef al-Zayadna, a 53-year-old father of 19, and his 22-year-old son Hamza, who has two children, remain captive.
His younger son Bilal, 18, and daughter Aisha, 17, were released on November 30, on the last day of a one-week truce in fighting between Israel and Hamas that saw 105 hostages return from the Gaza Strip in exchange for 240 Palestinians jailed by Israel.
Noaf al-Zayadna was in Paris this week as part of an initiative by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, an independent group of relatives.
Wearing a traditional red and white chequered headdress, Zayadna told an audience at the European Judaism Centre that his brother Youssef has diabetes and high blood pressure, while his nephew Hamza suffers from headaches.
"I call on Hamas to go to him (Youssef) and tell him: 'You are leaving to go to work to provide for your children, go get treatment instead of dying here with us. You are sick and your son is sick,'" he said.
Another Bedouin, 22-year-old Samer El-Talalqa, is also still being held hostage after being abducted from Kibbutz Nir Am, according to Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
Zayadna said Bilal and Aisha were "physically tired" when they returned after almost two months in captivity.
He said that, asked about the conditions they were held in, Bilal told him: "I don't know, they took us blindfolded and led us into a house then underground and they closed us off, I didn't know what was outside. After 55 days, they came to us and told us, 'You are leaving with the deal.'"
Tens of thousands of Bedouins live under constant threat of home demolitions in villages that Israel does not recognise in the Negev, Human Rights Watch says.
More than 70,000 live in the Israeli-established Bedouin township of Rahat, which the Negev Coexistence Forum for Civil Equality says has the lowest socio-economic ranking of localities in Israel.
A Bedouin man with psycho-social disabilities named Hisham al-Sayed is believed to have been held in Gaza since he entered the Palestinian territory of his own accord in 2015.
