Israeli journalists report outside the apartment building of Ethiopian-Israeli Avraham Mengisto, 28, in the costal city of Ashkelon
Two Israeli citizens are being held in the Gaza Strip, at least one of them by the Hamas militant group, Israeli authorities said yesterday.
The announcement, made after months of secrecy, raised memories of the case of Gilad Schalit, an Israeli soldier captured by Hamas in a cross-border raid and released five years later in a prisoner swap, or the deadly kidnappings of three Israeli teens by Hamas militants in the West Bank last summer.
But yesterday’s news was not accompanied by the nationwide panic that occurred with the previous two cases — perhaps because the two missing Israelis were not violently captured but also a reflection of a tense but quiet working relationship that has emerged between Israel and Hamas since a devastating war a year ago.
Avraham Mangisto, an Israeli of Ethiopian descent in his late 20s, “independently” crossed the border fence into the Gaza Strip on Sept. 7 last year, nearly two weeks after the end of the Israel-Gaza war, said the Israeli defense body responsible for Palestinian civilian affairs. It gave no further details of why he crossed into the Palestinian territory.
The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories said the second Israeli citizen being held in Gaza is a Bedouin Arab man from Israel’s Negev desert. Officials refused to say how long he has been held in Gaza or how he got there. They also would not say which group had him in custody.
Bedouin make up a small group within Israel’s Arab minority, numbering about 180,000.
COGAT said that “according to credible intelligence,” Mangisto is being held “against his will” by Hamas. It said “Israel has appealed (to) international and regional interlocutors to demand his immediate release and verify his well-being.”
“This is a humanitarian matter and I expect those holding him to treat him properly and to return him in full health,” Israeli President Reuven Rivlin in a statement.
A spokesman for Hamas, Salah Bardawil, declined comment. “We don’t have any information about it. Even if is true, we don’t have instructions to talk about it,” he said.
It was not clear why Israel decided to come forward with the news yesterday. But Khaled Mashaal, the head of Hamas’ political bureau, may have forced its hand by telling the London-based Al-Araby Al-Jadeed newspaper late Tuesday that Israel had asked Hamas through a European mediator to release “two soldiers and two bodies.”
Israeli media report that the bodies of Israeli soldiers Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin, killed during combat in Gaza last summer, are thought to be held by Hamas. Daniel Estrin, Jerusalem ,AP
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