Amid the sobs of relatives rushing to hug Farhan al-Qadi and the ululations of neighbors celebrating his return home to a Bedouin village in southern Israel on Wednesday, the first thing the rescued hostage wanted to do was find his mother.
When he did, he dropped to his knees and kissed her feet.
Mr. al-Qadi, 52, the first Israeli Arab to be rescued alive since the deadly Hamas-led attack and abductions on Oct. 7, later spoke of his gratitude for the Israeli forces and medics who had rescued and cared for him.
Then, with the Israeli bombardment of neighboring Gaza echoing in the background, he made a plea to both sides: Stop the killing.
“To Palestinians and Israelis, I wish an end to this war,” he told those gathered. “Palestinians and Israelis feel the same pain.”
Joy was palpable in the ramshackle village of Karkur, a place of squat homes made of tarpaulin and metal sheeting not far from the town of Rahat. The celebration uplifted members of Mr. al-Qadi’s family, who have been grappling with two kinds of heartbreak since October, straddling both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide.
The Bedouin minority were victims of the Hamas-led kidnappings, and are also aching for their Palestinian relatives in Gaza.
To Hamas, Mr. al-Qadi, though a Muslim and an Arab, was an Israeli hostage. Back in Israel, he remains a Bedouin, a group marginalized in Israel.
Once seminomadic herders, the Bedouin have long been corralled by Israel into impoverished towns in the Negev desert, but many actually live in unrecognized villages like Karkur. Some Bedouin serve in the Israeli military or work on kibbutzim or for other Israeli Jews, and the group is sometimes seen as traitors by fellow Arabs.
As Israel ramped up the war in Gaza, Mr. al-Qadi’s wife, Sumiya al-Sana, said she had been appalled to find that her husband, who had worked as a unarmed guard on a kibbutz in southern Israel, was seen on Arab social media as an enemy.
“They’d call him a collaborator, a traitor,” she said. “They’d say he’s useless; Hamas should just kill him. And they don’t know him — they don’t know he used to donate part of his salary to orphans in Gaza.”
Every day, she said, she listened to news from Gaza, hoping for a clue about her husband’s fate. And even now that he is home safe, she is still awaiting signals of life from her uncles, who are among more than a million Gazans forced to flee their homes to escape Israeli bombardments.
“Shame on both sides,” she said.
The family was stunned to receive news of Mr. al-Qadi’s rescue on Tuesday, having thought that the only chance of seeing him alive was through a cease-fire deal. But none has failed to materialized as negotiations have repeatedly stalled.
Waiting for him at home on Wednesday, Ms. al-Sana wore bright lipstick and a new dress. She said that when she heard he had been rescued, unharmed, she could not feel her legs.
“Farhan and I, we are not just a couple,” she said. “ To me, he is like a brother, a father — he is everything to me.”
Her husband, dressed in a black T-shirt and jeans, appeared frailer and paler than she had ever seen him.
In an interview with The New York Times on Wednesday, Mr. al-Qadi said he had lost around 28 pounds — not because he had no food, but because he was distraught during his 10 months of captivity, which he spent entirely in Hamas tunnels underground.
“I came out to an entire battalion waiting for me with smiles and hugs — 40 to 50 people,” he said. “When I came out, it was hard for me to see the sun because of its intensity, so I put on sunglasses.” He has to keep wearing sunglasses, he said, whenever he is in daylight.
As Israelis across the country celebrated Mr. al-Qadi’s release, his story put the spotlight on the plight of Israel’s Bedouin community. At least 17 Bedouin have died in the war, officials say, and three living and one dead Bedouin remain hostage in Gaza.
Few Bedouin have access to medical centers or bomb shelters to escape Hamas rocket fire on southern Israel because so many live in villages unacknowledged by the government. Karkur does not have electricity, relying instead on solar panels, and only recently got connected to running water.
Ms. al-Sana said she had been touched by the warm welcome Israeli officials offered Mr. al-Qadi, who received a call from the Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, and the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
But she said she did not have much hope for change.
“No,” she said. “The racism is there.”
Her ordeal over the past months have left her longing to bridge the divide between Israeli Jews and Arabs, she said, and to reach out to the families of Jewish hostages she has seen on television.
“My face would darken,” she said. “I was crying with them. I felt their pain.”
She was held back, however, by conservative Bedouin custom surrounding women’s interactions with strangers. One relative who attended some of the gatherings of other hostage families — quietly, so as not to draw more accusations of being traitors — was his brother Maddah al-Qadi.
The family is still praying for a cease-fire to bring relief to others.
“Hopefully, everyone will be released — Arabs and Jews — and this war will end, ” Maddah al-Qadi said.
Read More: Straddling Tense Divide, Family of Bedouin Hostage Celebrates His Release and Pray for
