TEL AVIV: Unlike many families who blame Israel’s government for not getting their loved ones released from captivity in Gaza, Adi Alexander is hesitant to point fingers.
Pragmatic and measured, the father of the last living American being held hostage by Hamas just wants his son to come home.
“I don’t want to get into who came first, the egg or the chicken,” Alexander told AP on Friday from his New Jersey home. Still, with the once-promising ceasefire giving way to renewed fighting between Israel and Hamas, he wonders whether Israel can secure his son’s freedom and is more hopeful about the US’s chances to do it.
Edan Alexander, a 21-year-old Israeli-American soldier who grew up in the US, is one of 59 hostages still in Gaza, more than half of whom are believed to be dead. Last week, Hamas said it would release Edan and the bodies of four other hostages if Israel recommitted to the stalled ceasefire agreement.
Days later, though, Israel launched rockets across Gaza, breaking the two-month-old deal and killing hundreds of Palestinians. The hostilities show no signs of abating, with Israel vowing Friday to advance deeper into Gaza until Hamas releases the remaining hostages.
The return to fighting has inflamed the debate in Israel over the fate of those held captive. Netanyahu has come under mounting domestic pressure, with mass protests over his handling of the hostage crisis. But he also faces demands from his hard-line allies not to accept any deal that falls short of Hamas’ destruction.
A father’s hope
Adi Alexander said he thinks Netanyahu wants to bring everybody home, but on his own terms. He questions Netanyahu’s plans whereas he believes US President Donald Trump’s message is clear: He’s focused on bringing the hostages home. Alexander said he’s counting on the US to bridge the large gap between Israel and Hamas. His message to Trump about his administration’s efforts to free his son and the others: “Just keep this job going.”
Many families of the hostages say Trump has done more for them than Netanyahu, crediting the president with the ceasefire. In December, before taking office, Trump demanded the hostages’ immediate release, saying if they weren’t freed before he was sworn in for his second term there would be “hell to pay.”
Phase one of the deal began weeks later, and saw the release of 25 Israeli hostages and the bodies of eight others in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners. The ceasefire was supposed to remain in place as long as talks on the second phase continued, but Netanyahu balked at entering substantive negotiations.
Instead, he tried to force Hamas to accept a new ceasefire plan put forth by US Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff. That plan would have required Hamas to release half its remaining hostages — the militant group’s main bargaining chip — in exchange for a ceasefire extension and a promise to negotiate a lasting truce.
Hamas has said it will only release the remaining hostages in exchange for a lasting ceasefire and a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, as called for in the original ceasefire agreement mediated by the United States, Egypt and Qatar.
The US engages directly with Hamas
As a soldier, Edan would have been released during the deal’s second phase. But Hamas announced this month that it would release Edan after the White House said it had engaged in “ongoing talks and discussions” with the group — separate from the main negotiations. It is the first known direct engagement between Hamas and the US since the State Department designated it a foreign terrorist organization in 1997.
Adi Alexander said Adam Boehler, who’s helping spearhead the Trump administration’s efforts to free the hostages, led those separate talks because phase two was stalled. But he said he didn’t believe Hamas’ claim that it would release his son because it came out of left field and wasn’t being considered as part of the discussions between the group and Boehler.
The anxious father said he speaks with Witkoff and Boehler almost daily and understands the negotiations are ongoing despite the resumption of fighting.
A native of Tenafly, a New Jersey suburb of New York City, Edan moved to Israel in 2022 after high school and enlisted in the military. He was abducted from his base during the Oct. 7, 2023, attack that ignited the war, when Hamas killed about 1,200 people in Israel and took 251 others hostage.
The grueling wait
Since Edan’s abduction, there’s been little news about him.
Hamas released a video of him over Thanksgiving weekend in November. His family said it was difficult to watch as he cried and pleaded for help, but it was a relief to see he was alive.
Freed hostages have given the family more news, according to his father. Some said Edan had lost a lot of weight. Others said he’d been an advocate for fellow hostages, standing up for kidnapped Thai workers and telling their captors that the workers weren’t Israeli and should be freed.
Although he knows the resumption of fighting means it will take more time to get his son back, Adi Alexander said he thinks both sides had became too comfortable with the ceasefire and that this was one reason phase two never began. He wants the war to end, and hopes the fighting will be limited and targeted and push everyone back to the table.
“Somebody, I think had to shake this tree to create chaos, and chaos creates opportunities,” he said. “The only objective is to get back to the bargaining table to get those people out.”
Father of the last living American hostage in Gaza hopes Trump can bring his son home
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Father of the last living American hostage in Gaza hopes Trump can bring his son home
- Edan Alexander, a 21-year-old Israeli-American soldier who grew up in the US, is one of 59 hostages still in Gaza
- Adi Alexander said he thinks Netanyahu wants to bring everybody home, but on his own terms
Israel says retrieved official Syrian archive on executed spy Eli Cohen
- Eli Cohen was discovered by Syrian intelligence and publically hanged in Damascus on May 18, 1965
- Among the items recovered are a handwritten will penned by Cohen hours before his execution, audio recordings and files from his interrogations
JERUSALEM: Israel announced on Sunday that it had retrieved the official Syrian archive on famed spy Eli Cohen — a cache of 2,500 documents, photographs and personal effects linked to the Mossad agent executed in Damascus in 1965.
“In a complex covert operation by the Mossad, in cooperation with a strategic partner service, the official Syrian archive on Eli Cohen was brought to Israel,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement, referring to the country’s external intelligence agency.
“The trove contains thousands of items that had been kept under tight security by Syrian intelligence for decades,” the statement added.
Cohen, who developed close ties with high-level political and military figures in Syria as part of a four-year espionage operation, was eventually discovered by Syrian intelligence.
He was publically hanged in Damascus on May 18, 1965.
Cohen’s story was dramatized in the Netflix minizeries “The Spy,” starring the British actor Sacha Baron Cohen.
The prime minister added that retrieving the archive reflected Israel’s “unwavering commitment to bringing back all our missing, prisoners, and hostages.”
The statement was an apparent reference both to the 58 captives, dead and alive, being held by Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza, as well as the announcement last week that Israel had retrieved from Syria the body of a soldier missing for 43 years, also in a covert Mossad operation.
Sunday’s statement said that the recovery of the items came after “decades of Mossad intelligence, operational, and technological effort to find every scrap of information about Eli Cohen in the quest to shed light on his fate and discover the location of his burial.”
Over the years, multiple operations have been carried out to that end, the statement said, including “inside enemy states.”
Mossad director David Barnea said in the statement that recovering the archive was a “significant achievement,” and “another step toward locating our man in Damascus’ burial place.”
Among the items recovered are a handwritten will penned by Cohen hours before his execution, audio recordings and files from his interrogations and those of his sources, letters he wrote to family members in Israel and photographs from his clandestine mission in Syria.
Additionally, the cache included belongings taken from his home after his arrest, including forged passports and photographs of him with senior Syrian military and government officials, as well as notebooks and diaries listing Mossad tasks.
Also discovered was a file labelled “Nadia Cohen,” detailing Syrian intelligence monitoring of Cohen’s wife’s campaign to free her husband.
In a special meeting on Sunday, Netanyahu and Barnea shared the trove of items with Nadia Cohen, the statement said.
Israel army says 2 projectiles launched from Gaza after air raid sirens sound
- One projectile was intercepted and the other fell in an open area
JERUSALEM: The Israeli army said two projectiles were launched from the Gaza Strip on Sunday, shortly after it announced it had commenced “extensive ground operations” across the besieged Palestinian territory.
“Following the sirens that sounded in Kissufim, two projectiles were identified crossing into Israel from the central Gaza Strip,” the army said, adding one was intercepted and the other fell in an open area.
Israeli forces have demolished 600 Palestinian houses in Jenin since January offensive
- Shops, houses and infrastructure in Al-Sharqi and Al-Hadaf neighbourhoods sustain heaviest damage
- Forces arrest a prisoner who was released during Israel-Hamas truce in November 2023
LONDON: Israeli forces have demolished nearly 600 Palestinian houses in the Jenin refugee camp, according to the town municipality, where Israel has been carrying out military operations for the past 118 days.
On Sunday, forces intensified dredging and destruction operations in the Jenin refugee camp, causing significant damage to its water and electricity infrastructure and main roads, while continuing to block access to the area.
The Jenin Municipality has documented the total destruction of 600 houses in the camp, while others were either partially damaged or have been abandoned by residents since Israel launched a major offensive in January.
The neighborhoods of Al-Sharqi and Al-Hadaf sustained the heaviest damage — to shops, houses and infrastructure — the Wafa news agency reported.
Also on Sunday, Israeli forces arrested Yasmeen Shaaban at her home in Al-Jalameh village, north of Jenin. Shaaban, who spent 21 months in prison, was released in November 2023 during the first temporary truce and captive-exchange arrangement between Israel and Hamas.
The municipality reported that 22,000 people are displaced in Jenin as Israeli forces increase enforcement in the town and its refugee camp. The military operation has caused heavy losses to businesses in Jenin, leading to many shop closures and a decrease in shopper footfall from nearby villages, with an estimated loss of $300 million.
Since Israel launched its offensive on January 21 in Jenin, at least 40 people have been killed, while hundreds have been arrested and injured.
Italian MPs protest at Egypt’s Gaza border against war
- The group — including 11 members of the Italian parliament, three MEPs and representatives of NGOs — held signs reading “Stop genocide now”
RAFAH: Italian parliamentarians protested on Sunday in front of Egypt’s Rafah border crossing with Gaza, calling for aid access and an end to the war in the devastated Palestinian territory.
“Europe is not doing enough, nothing to stop the massacre,” Cecilia Strada, an Italian member of the European parliament, told AFP.
The group — including 11 members of the Italian parliament, three MEPs and representatives of NGOs — held signs reading “Stop genocide now,” “End illegal occupation” and “Stop arming Israel.”
“There should be a complete embargo on weapons to and from Israel and a stop to trade with illegal settlements,” Strada said.
The protesters laid toys on the ground in solidarity with Gaza’s children, who the UN warns face “a growing risk of starvation, illness and death” more than two months into a total Israeli aid blockade.
At least 15,000 children have been killed in Gaza since the Israel-Hamas war began in October 2023, according to the United Nations.
Israel has faced mounting pressure to lift its aid blockade, as UN agencies warn of critical shortages of food, clean water, fuel and medicines.
It resumed its offensive on March 18, ending a two-month truce in its war against Hamas triggered by the Palestinian militant group’s October 2023 attack on Israel.
On Saturday Israel announced an expanded military campaign, killing dozens of people in new strikes.
“We hear the bombs right now,” Walter Massa, president of Italian non-profit organization Associazione Ricreativa Culturale Italiana, told AFP near the crossing.
“The Israeli army continues to do what it believes is right in the face of an international community that does not intervene, and in Gaza, beyond the Rafah crossing border, people continue to die,” he said.
UN chief Antonio Guterres said Saturday said he was “alarmed” at the escalation and called for “a permanent ceasefire, now.”
Italy’s government on Saturday reiterated its calls to Israel to stop attacking Gaza, with Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani saying: “Enough with the attacks.”
“We no longer want to see the Palestinian people suffer,” Tajani said.
Gaza’s health ministry said Sunday 3,193 people have been killed since Israel resumed its strikes on March 18, taking the war’s overall toll to 53,339.
Lebanon says soldier among two wounded in Israeli strike
BEIRUT: Lebanon said two people including a soldier were wounded in an Israeli strike Sunday in the country’s south, where the army has been deploying after a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.
“A soldier was moderately wounded due to the Israeli enemy targeting of a vehicle... at the Beit Yahun checkpoint” in Bint Jbeil district, an army statement said.
Beit Yahun is around eight kilometers (around five miles) from the border.
The health ministry said two people including a soldier were wounded in the strike, which it said was launched by an “Israeli enemy drone” and targeted a vehicle.
The Israeli army did not immediately comment on the reported strike.
Israel has continued to launch raids on its neighbor despite a November truce which sought to halt more than a year of hostilities with Hezbollah militants including two months of all-out war.
Lebanon has reported four deadly strikes this week in the south, with Israel saying it targeted Hezbollah operatives.
Under the ceasefire, the Iran-backed Hezbollah was to pull back its fighters north of Lebanon’s Litani River and dismantle any remaining military infrastructure to its south.
Israel was to withdraw all its forces from Lebanon, but it has kept troops in five areas that it deems “strategic.”
The Lebanese army has been deploying in the south as Israeli forces have withdrawn and has been dismantling Hezbollah infrastructure.
The truce was based on a United Nations Security Council resolution that says Lebanese troops and UN peacekeepers should be the only forces in south Lebanon, and calls for the disarmament of all non-state groups.
Last month, President Joseph Aoun said the army was deployed in more than 85 percent of the south, and that the sole obstacle to full control across the frontier area was “Israel’s occupation of five border positions.”
Also in April, Lebanon’s military said a munitions blast in the south killed three personnel, days after an explosion killed another soldier as the force was dismantling mines in a tunnel.
