Who are the two-decade-long Israeli captives set to be released in 7th Israel-Hamas prisoner swap?

Al-Ahram Weekly

21-02-2025

Hamas will release Israelis Avraham 'Avera' Mengistu, 38, and Hisham Al-Sayed, 37, captured in the Gaza Strip a decade ago, in the last prisoner swap under the first phase of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and the Palestinian resistance group on Saturday.
In exchange for the decade-long captives, Israel will release 46 Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences.
These prisoners, who were previously freed in the Shalit deal but later rearrested, will be deported abroad as part of the agreement.
It will also release 444 Palestinian prisoners from Gaza arrested after 7 October, along with 48 serving life sentences — some facing deportation — and 60 others with long sentences, in exchange for the four other living captives.
Hamas fighters captured the two men on two separate instances in the Gaza Strip after they crossed into the territory on their own in 2014 and 2015, respectively.
Ahram Online looks at the stories of Avera and Hisham, both of whom suffer from mental illness, as they present a unique case.
Who are Avraham "Avera" Mengistu and Hisham Al-Sayed?
Avera was born in Gondar, Ethiopia, in 1987. He lived in Ashkelon (Asqalan), a coastal city only 13 kilometres away from Gaza.
Mengistu crossed into northern Gaza from the beach at Zikim on 7 September 2014, where Hamas fighters captured him.
However, Tel Aviv tried to cover up his disappearance, and it was not until July 2015 that an Israeli judge agreed to lift a gag order on the case, which made it public.
As information about the case leaked, the Israeli public grew more outraged.
'On 7 September 2014, Israeli citizen Avraham Mengistu intentionally crossed the border fence into the Gaza Strip, and according to reliable intelligence information, he is being held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip,' read a subsequent Israeli defense ministry statement.
According to Israeli media reports, Mengistu's family was upset with the government's reaction, explaining that greater efforts would have been exerted to recover him had he been white, as was the case with Gilad Shalit in 2011. Mengistu's family also stated that their son had a mental illness, which remains unspecified.
Documents from the Israeli Health Ministry, as reviewed by Human Rights Watch (HRW), reveal that Mengistu was hospitalized in a psychiatric facility for 19 days in January 2013. He spent 12 days at Beersheva Hospital voluntarily and seven days involuntarily.
Israeli government allegedly redacted his diagnosis from the official documents released to the family.
Tila Fenta, a relative who has led a campaign to get Avraham released, told the BBC in October 2023, days after 7 October, that the family feels let down by the Israeli state - though she says the international spotlight on Israelis captured by Hamas, now might help her cause.
"I think Avera is a man who society doesn't like so much because of his colour, mental illness problem and having grown up in a poor area of Ashkelon, she said.
"I think all this made him not wanted in society. If he was a bit brighter or from a good area, the treatment would be different. I know this isn't the time to say something wrong about my country, but the truth must be told." She said big human rights organizations should also have done more. "The same goes for the Bedouin - both are disadvantaged.
Hisham Al-Sayed is a Bedouin Arab Israeli, a 1948 Palestinian.
Born in 1988, he lived in the Negev [Naqab] desert's Al-Sayed village and is the oldest of eight siblings. Hamas fighters captured him on 20 April 2015, when he crossed into the Strip via a breach in the security fence.
In statements to Israeli media, Al-Sayed's family said that he suffers from poor health and mental illness. Medical documents published by Israel claim that al-Sayed has suffered from hearing loss since 2007.
Other medical documents published by HRW in 2017 indicate that he has been suffering from 'a personality disorder and unspecified behavioural and emotional disturbances' since 2009. The HRW report also states that Al-Sayed was diagnosed with 'severe mental illness' in 2010, while his final diagnosis in 2013 showed that he was suffering from 'schizophrenia.'
It's worth noting that the families of Israeli captives have been persistently advocating for their repatriation. In Israeli media interviews, the families argued that the recovery of their captive members should have been the primary goal of the 'conflict.'
However, Netanyahu's government prioritized 'wiping out Hamas' by carrying out a 15-month genocidal war, one of the bloodiest in recent history. The Israeli occupation forces killed at least 46,788 Palestinians, 17,881 of which were children, and injured 110,453 since 7 October. At least 1.9 million people - 90 percent of the Gazan population - were also displaced, per a United Nations (UN) report.
On Thursday, Hamas released the remains of four Israeli captives to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) as stipulated in the Gaza truce, stating that it worked to preserve their lives, but Israel's war on the strip killed them and their guards.
Civilians or soldiers?
The military status of both Israelis has been subject to debate since their capture. Question marks have been persistently following both captives, with Hamas believing them to be soldiers, while Tel Aviv claims they are not.
Israeli authorities stated that Al-Sayed was not a soldier in the army. He volunteered for military service on 18 August 2008 but was discharged on 6 November of the same year, as he was found 'unfit for service' due to 'health and psychological reasons.'
Hamas' first mention of either man was in April 2016, when Al-Qassam Brigades announced via pre-recorded video they had captured four Israeli soldiers; two of them - Shaul Aron and Hadar Goldin - whose bodies were detained during the Israeli war on Gaza in 2014, and the other two are Mengistu and Al-Sayed.
The video included photos of Mengistu and Al-Sayed in Israeli military uniforms.
In a meeting with HRW in September 2016, Palestinian politician and Hamas co-founder Mahmoud al-Zahar 'refused to acknowledge the detention of Mengistu and Al-Sayed.' HRW also stated that al-Zahar told them that 'there are no civilians in Israel' since all serve in the army and that 'Israelis who enter Gaza are spies.'
Mengistu's brother, Ilan, told Israeli media that his brother had previously gone missing on two or three occasions, all to northern Israel.
On the other hand, Al-Sayed has a much more extensive disappearance track record, with his father, Sha'ban Al-Sayed, revealing he disappeared to the occupied West Bank at least 15 times and walked to Jordan once.
Various reports claim he also crossed into Egypt previously. Additionally, Israeli news outlet Haaretz reported on an incident in February 2010 of a man who fits al-Sayed's profile crossing into Gaza.
Within the same week, sources told Nazareth-based Palestinian news platform Bokra that the trespasser was Hisham Al-Sayed.
'[Hisham] is not a soldier. He has been ill since his teenage years. He loves to walk for hours and hours and he is very social. He likes the attention when he goes places he knows are forbidden. People usually realize quite quickly that he is ill and help him get home,' Sha'ban told the Observer in a 2024 interview. 'He went to Gaza too, and the Bedouin we know there helped return him within 24 hours. But the Hamas leadership changed in 2014, and his luck ran out.'
Captive/Prisoner treatment: A study in ethics
Hamas released a 39-second video of Al-Sayed looking sickly in bed, wearing an oxygen mask, on 28 June 2022.
The Palestinian resistance group asked Israel for a deal to release their ill, possibly dying, captive. A TV tuned to Al Jazeera in the background proved the video was recent. While Tel Aviv renewed efforts to recover al-Sayed, they did not reach an exchange deal with Hamas before Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.
Despite his illness, Hamas managed to keep Al-Sayed alive. For a decade, they have been providing food and medical services.
Hamas' humane treatment of its captives also extended to Mengistu, whose last appearance was in an undated video released by Hamas in January 2023, nearly a year before 7 October. In the video, Mengistu looks well. 'I am the captive Avera Mengistu. Until when will I be here in captivity, me and my friends,' he says. 'After many years of the pain. Where are the country and the people of Israel from our destiny?'
During Israel's 15-month genocidal war on Gaza, there has been 'no mention' of the Palestinians that Israel has detained since October 2023, which include 18,000 to 20,000 forcibly disappeared, per Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) estimates.
In June 2024, Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir called for a bill to enable the mass execution of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
A report on the pattern of administrative detention from 2001 to 2024 by the Israeli B'tsleem rights group shows a sharp and unprecedented surge since 2021 in the number of Palestinians arrested by the Israeli authorities over the past three years and since the current extreme right government came to power in 2022.
'Testimonies clearly indicate a system, institutional policy focused on the continual abuse and torture of all Palestinian prisoners held by Israel,' reads a B'tsleem report titled Welcome to Hell. 'Frequent acts of severe, arbitrary violence; sexual assault; humiliation and degradation, deliberate starvation; forced unhygienic conditions; sleep deprivation, prohibition on, and punitive measure for, religious worship; confiscation of all communal and personal belongings; and denial of adequate medical treatment - these descriptions appear time and again in the testimonies, in horrifying detail and with chilling similarities.'
The report was published mere days ahead of the Sde Teiman detention facility gang-rape case coming to light. A group of Israeli occupation forces gang-raped a Gazan prisoner in a video leaked from the prison and aired on Israeli Channel 12 in August 2024. In a poll published by the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies, 65 percent of Israelis were found opposing the criminal prosecution of the soldiers.
On Saturday, Adel Sbeih, a Gazan freed in the sixth captive/prisoner exchange, told a harrowing tale of his experience in prison. 'They sawed my leg off and told me Gaza was no more,' he says in a viral video.
The PCHR is publishing a report in March 2025 on the enforced disappearance of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza during the war. The findings, he said, are 'shocking to the bones.'
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