Hamas released Edan Alexander, the last living American hostage that he held in Gaza, on Monday evening, after the mediators have mediated an agreement between the group and the United States that largely elusive the Israeli government.
The release of Mr. Alexander came on the eve of a visit by President Trump to the Middle East and was interpreted by Hamas officials as an attempt to secure support for a wider agreement to end the war.
Mr. Alexander, 21, was among about 250 people seized and brought to Gaza during the attack led by Hamas to Israel on October 7, 2023, who lit the war in Gaza. A double American Israeli national in service in the Israeli army was captured by a military place that morning. He grew up in New Jersey and moved to Israel after the high school to join the military.
Unlike most other hostages, Alexander has been released without a ceased the fire formally announced between Israel and Hamas, highlighting the failure of the efforts to guarantee a wider truce between the two parts. Hamas still holds at least 20 living hostages – together with about 40 corpses, including those of several Americans – but it is reluctant to free more than Israel not to accept negotiations to end the war. Israel wants the right to continue the war after every future truce, leading to an impasse in the talks.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, declared in a declaration on Monday that the release of Mr. Alexander showed the benefits of placing Hamas under more military pressure. In March, Netanyahu ordered the Israeli military to break a previous one ceased the fire, saying that the group would have forced the group to release more hostages and lead to its total military defeat.
But the critics of Mr. Netanyahu's strategy said that Mr. Alexander's release instead underlined the failure of such an approach, since it was issued mainly due to American pressure rather than Israeli action. An growing number of Israeli support guarantees an agreement to free all the hostages, even if such a truce would require Mr. Netanyahu to compromise, end the war and allow Hamas to survive. Netanyahu announced on Monday that he would have sent a delegation to join the negotiations for a ceased temporary fire, disappointing those who want to accept a permanent respite to free all the hostages.
As a result, the relatives of the hostages still in Gaza have declared that they had conflicting feelings for the release of Mr. Alexander. Many gathered at Tel Aviv on Monday to ask for a wider agreement.
Yehuda Cohen, whose son Nimrod is still held in Gaza, said he was happy for Mr. Alexander but frustrated by the fact that he was released “only because he is an American citizen”.
However, Mr. Cohen saw hope how Trump was willing to get around Mr. Netanyahu. “He is losing patience,” said Cohen of Mr. Trump. “We hope it is a new beginning of a new hostage agreement, forcing Netanyahu to end the war, get all the hostages.”
Trump has contributed to feeding these hopes by announcing on social media on Sunday that Mr. Alexander's release could be “the first of those latest steps necessary to put an end to this brutal conflict”.
The US officials met in person with the leaders of Hamas this year, before stopping contacts following Israel complaints. It is not clear whether the direct contact was resumed for the broker of the release of Mr. Alexander.
Adam Boehler, one of the US officials who met with Hamas this year, published a photograph with Mr. Alexander's mother, Yael, while taking the same plane from the United States to Israel to greet Mr. Alexander to his liberation.
Without the end of the war in sight, the help agencies felt a growing risk of hunger in Gaza. An initiative supported by the United Nations that monitors malnutrition, the classification of the integrated food safety phase, said on Monday that Israel risked causing a famine if it proceeded in the coming weeks with a planned military advance. In such a situation, the initiative has declared in a new report: “The vast majority of people in the Gaza strip would not have access to food, water, accommodation and medicine”.
Since March, Israel has blocked all food and fuel supplies in the area, many of whom are occupied by Israeli troops, saying that he wanted to prevent any supply and profits from reaching Hamas.
The civilians brought the weight of Israel's restrictions. The fuel embargo made it almost impossible to distribute food in certain parts of Gaza and the lack of new food deliveries caused the reduction of existing stocks. At the end of April, the World Food Program announced that its food supplies in the area had finished, while the United Nations Agency that helps Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said she no longer had flour supplies.
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