Edan Alexander, a 21-year-old Israeli-American soldier, was released on Monday, May 12, after more than half of captivity. It was the last hostage that lived in American nationality and was held in the Gaza Strip, from the bloody attacks of Hamas on October 7, 2023.
Its launch was announced by the Al-Qassam brigades, the Hamas Army branch, before the Israeli army announced that it had received the exharge on Israeli soil. In parallel with his first tour in the Middle East, the US president, Donald Trump, hastened to react in his release.
“Edan Alexander, an American citizen who, until recently, many people believed dead, will be released in approximately two hours,” he said in X.
• The kidnapped young about a kibutz
Participated in the Israeli army, served at the edge of the Gaza Strip in the Golani Infantry Unit, when it was taken hostage, at the age of 19, in a military post, near Kibbutz Nirim.
On the morning of October 7, 2023, his mother, Yael Alexander, who passed through Israel, had contacted him on the phone when the rockets begin to fall. Edan is safe. From seven o’clock, he no longer responds to his SMS. Yael will be informed a week after it was eliminated.
Liberated on Monday, the Israeli army said he will be transferred to a reception center in Réim, southern Israel, where his family will join him, before being taken by plane to the Ichilov hospital, Tel Aviv, according to the army. “I am impatient and happy. (…) We are waiting to be able to hug Edan in our arms and feel that he really is with us,” said his grandmother Varda Ben Baruch.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, thanked the US president for his help, believing that the release of Edan Alexander was the result of a “winning combination” that combines Israel’s military pressure and that, politician, of Donald Trump.
• A video call released by its grandmother
A few days before its launch, the Islamist movement had launched a video that showed Edan Alexander, clearly speaking under limitation, and saying that he wanted to go home to celebrate the holidays, while Israel celebrated Fossah, the Jewish Easter.
On April 20, his Israeli grandmother Varda Ben Baruu went to the edge of the Gaza Strip, with relatives of other hostages, and called on him, according to a video broadcast by the Families of Hosages forum.
“Edanile (affectionate tiny of Edan in Hebrew), it is the grandmother who speaks to her (…) We have received a sign of life on her part of Easter (…) Keep strong. We love you and do everything possible to be released and that all hostages go home. Edanile, I can be tired, but we do not give me up.
The Israeli army then announced that the exharge had been delivered to the Gaza Strip, before crossing the border to enter the Israeli territory.
• A “typical American young man”
Born in Israel in Tel Aviv, Edan Alexander moved when he was a baby in the United States with his Israeli parents. The family first moved in Maryland, before moving in 2008 in Tenafly, New Jersey.
He ended up joining the Hebrew State in 2022, as The Guardian reported. After graduating from high school, the latter ended up participating in the Israeli army.
According to a local newspaper of a New Jersey County, where he grew up, his friends and loved ones describe Edan Alexander as a warm, fun and athletic teenager. In an interview with El Periódico, his father, Adi Alexander, presents it as a “typical American young man”, a fan of the New York Knicks basketball team, loving swimming and spending time with his friends.
In the Lycée de Tenafly, the exharge was dedicated to sports activities and was part of the local swimming team. He often went to Israel to visit his grandparents and celebrated his Mitzvah bar there (rite of adulthood in Judaism), according to the newspaper Northjersey.
• Israel interrupts its bombings for release
A source within Hamas said that the movement had been informed, through the mediators, of a break in the fight for their release.
This transfer is part of the negotiations between the Islamist movement, the Trump administration and the Israeli government, for whom the “conquest” plan of the Palestinian enclave is always priority.
After the announcement of the launch of Edan Alexander, Hamas called the Trump administration to “continue their efforts to end the war” in the Gaza Strip, after two movement officials talked about “direct discussions” with Washington.
Of the 251 people kidnapped in Israel that day, 57 are still held in Gaza, including 34 declared dead by the Israeli army.
On the side of the Palestinian enclave, the Palestinian civil defense reported at least ten dead on Monday, including several women and children, in an Israeli night strike against a school housing displaced in Jabalia, north of Gaza.
Source: BFM TV
