Amid detente with Hamas, Israel says 2 citizens held in Gaza

The defence ministry confirmed on Thursday that Avraham Mengistu, an Israeli of Ethiopian descent, had been missing, presumed held captive, since crossing into the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip last September. Israeli defence officials said there was “credible intelligence” that Mr Mengistu remained in Hamas custody.

“Israel has appealed to worldwide and regional interlocutors to demand his immediate release and verify his well-being”, the ministry statement added.

A Hamas spokesman, Salah Bardawil, said he had no information about the two missing Israelis.

“We don’t have any more information”.

The disclosure came after a court lifted a military gagging order on the case, ending intense secrecy on the part of the Israeli authorities, apparently motivated by a desire to stop the captives becoming bargaining chips.

Speaking with the Arabic language al-Araby al-Jadeed newspaper, Mashaal claimed Israel had requested of European officials that they mediate in negotiations with Hamas over the release of the captured individuals. Recently, Ethiopians have staged large demonstrations to protest what they call racist treatment by Israeli police and society.

The second man, who has not been named, is believed to be an Arab citizen of Israel from a Bedouin town in southern Israel.

Israel says the bodies of Israeli soldiers Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin have been in Hamas hands since the soldiers were killed in combat in Gaza last summer.

Israel has in the past engaged in prisoner swaps with Hamas, most notably in 2011, when Gilad Shalit, a soldier abducted by militants in a cross-border raid in 2006, was released in exchange for more than 1,000 Palestinians held in Israeli jails. But an African-born Israeli named Avraham Mengistu made a decision to slip across the border fence, bristling with high-tech sensors and protected by remote-controlled machine guns, and enter the Gaza Strip past year.

The Mayor of Ashkelon, Itamar Shimoni, spoke at the home of the Mengistu family Thursday, promising “The city of Ashkelon is with you from the first moment”.

Israel’s prime minister says the country is working to return two of its citizens said to be held in the Gaza Strip.

Israeli Channel 10 broadcast an interview with a man it identified as Mr Mengisto’s father, holding up a statement critical of Israeli authorities.

They said he had crossed the border to Gaza twice before, three times to Jordan and at least once to the West Bank. “Where is my son?”

“Anyone who makes Avera into a story about relations between the Ethiopian community and the state of Israel will leave him in Gaza for another year”, Lotan is heard telling Mengistu’s family, using the name by which he is known to friends and relatives.

The prime minister urged the worldwide community “that expresses its concern with the humanitarian situation in Gaza” to sound a clear call for their release. “I turn to Hamas and ask them to take into account my brother’s health situation and free him immediately”. “We hold Hamas responsible for their welfare”.

Ilan Mengistu asked the Israeli public to show restraint at this stage as the government works to secure his brother’s release.