After 3,800 days in captivity, Hamas’s longest-held hostage is set for release

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Avera Mengistu, his image on a TV screen, became a symbol for Israelis of Ethiopian descent of their marginalized position in Israeli society. At Tel Aviv’s makeshift Hostage Square, a clock counts the days, hours, minutes and seconds that Hamas has held captives since its attacks in October 2023 that sparked the war in Gaza.

The ticker now reads more than 500 days but still doesn’t reflect the time that Hamas’s longest-held Israeli hostage has spent in the enclave. Avera Mengistu, a 38-year-old Israeli of Ethiopian descent, has spent more than 3,800 days in captivity since crossing over to Gaza over a decade ago. If all goes to plan, he will be among the further six hostages Hamas is set to release under the Gaza cease-fire deal on Saturday.

For Mengistu’s family and the Ethiopian community in Israel, it will mark a joyous moment of relief. But is also a bitter reminder of how their efforts to free him failed to capture the public’s attention or force the government to strike a deal for his freedom. In the end, it took the capture of around 250 people in the Oct.

7 attacks—and the subsequent war in Gaza—to create the conditions for the return of Mengistu and another hostage, Hisham al-Sayed, 37, an Israeli Bedouin from southern Israel who also has been held for nearly a decade. Both men suffer from mental illness, according to their families, and crossed into Gaza of their own accord but weren’t stopped by the military. They both come from disadvantaged communities, and critics of the Israeli government say that is why it didn’t reach a deal to bring them home earlier.