The large Ziadna family, Bedouins from southern Israel, celebrated with restrained joy in front of the television screen the release of two of their members: Aisha (16) and Bilal (18). The departure of these two hostages from Gaza took place on the night of November 30th. The last exchange of kidnapped people in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons, agreed during Hamas’ week-long ceasefire on October 7, had just taken place. “We all cringed when we saw the picture when they were already in the hands of the Red Cross,” says Kamel Ziadna, 30 years old and cousin of the freedmen. He immediately adds: “But the joy is not full.” Hamza and Yousef are missing.” Those who are missing – because they remain in Gaza – are another brother of the freedmen, 22 years old, and the father of the three, who is 53 years old. Kamel tries to imagine how difficult it must have been for the four to part since they stayed together during captivity. It took 55 days for the Islamists to put the brothers on the winners’ list of the exchange.
The breach of the ceasefire at dawn on December 1, a few hours after the release of Aisha and Bilal, left the Ziadna family in a state of permanent uncertainty as the exchange had ended, at least for the time being. They suggest that the outlook is not optimistic. The war has returned with enormous ferocity, the army has expanded its occupation to the south of the Gaza Strip and there is no further ceasefire in sight.
In addition to Hamza and Yousef Ziadna, who suffers from high blood pressure and diabetes, there are 136 other hostages in the Gaza Strip, although 15 of them have already been confirmed dead. After spending several hours in the Soroka Hospital in the city of Beersheba, where Israeli authorities subjected them to some tests following the abduction, the two released brothers returned to their village of Ziadna, with a population of about 2,000, on Saturday, December 2nd the one who gives his name to the clan’s surname. They are the first two to be released from the Arab Israeli community, which makes up about 20% of the country’s 10 million people. According to local media, about half a dozen remain in Gaza.
Pictures of the arrival in the city taken by some of those present show a sober welcoming ceremony. Only hugs and handshakes from those present, no music or dancing. “There was no party. We couldn’t celebrate it. We all continue to pray for the return of Yousef and Hamza and for all the war dead on both sides,” says Kamel. The mention of prayers for the victims on both sides – more than 16,000 people have died in Gaza since the war began; In its October 7 attack, Hamas killed 1,200 people – not common in Israel these days. And as if to send a message to Hamas, Kamel points out that neither his cousin nor your uncle ever served in the Israeli army, where the Bedouin minority is exempt from conscription. The Bedouins, a community generally forgotten by their country’s authorities, are Arabs and Muslims who identify predominantly as Palestinians on Israeli territory.
One of the two roads leading to Ziadna winds through stinking remains of dead animals, garbage and debris. The path describes the conditions in which the family lives before their arrival. To the left of the road, the dirt between which a dog runs and a tethered horse treads on itself gives way to huts. To the right is a wide expanse of flat, clean land. “This is no longer Ziadna, it is the territory that the Jews took from us,” says Kamel, adding that his ancestors, who came from a nomadic tradition, settled in this place years before Israel existed as a state since 1948 .
Rahat billboard celebrating the release of Aisha and Bilal. Luis de Vega
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Last Monday, a group of around twenty men were already chatting within the city over glasses of coffee, tea and bottles of water. Everyone stands up and shakes hands when a little boy arrives and, barely opening his mouth, joins the group. It’s Bilal sitting on one of the plastic chairs. The family does not accept questions or photos. A military spokesman has already made it clear that information gleaned from the interrogations of the freed hostages would not be shared and that it could be crucial to rescue the rest.
In the presence of Bilal, their conversations with each other continue in a kind of welcoming ceremony in Ziadna. In it, the passage of time is marked not by the clock, but by the slow protocol of the men of the desert. Some are soldiers in uniform with their service weapons resting on their legs. There are authorities or neighbors from surrounding cities. Also some of the 19 children Yousef has, 15 with the mother of the three hostages and four with a second wife. Others present, including several of Yousef’s brothers, are responsible for the city, a dusty wasteland without electricity, water or asphalt. There is also no school and no health center, complains Kamel.
Ziadna lies on the outskirts of the urban center of Rahat and, with around 60,000 inhabitants, is considered the largest Bedouin town in the world and one of Israel’s largest sources of poverty. “Aisha and Bilal have returned this far after the kidnapping, without a trace of violence on their bodies, only with the loss of a few kilos,” explains Kamel, remembering that in these days of war “there are problems in providing food for everyone in Gaza receive”. . “.
At some point, three men with notebooks and pens retreat with Bilal to the Sheq, the room made of sheet metal and prefabricated material where the men of the clan meet and at whose door the others continue to gather. The three are psychologists who want to help him recover from the kidnapping. There is now no public trace of Aisha or any of Ziadna’s other women. The last time the entire family was together was during a wedding reception on Friday, October 6, the eve of the Hamas attack on Israel. Kamel estimates that around 2 a.m. on Saturday, Yousef and Hamza, accompanied by Aisha and Bilal, went to Kibbutz Holit, next to Gaza, where they work in a stable with cows. There they were caught by the arrival of the Islamists at four in the morning.
Nowadays, on the streets and entrances of Rahat, you can see posters with the faces of Aisha and Bilal saying: “Congratulations on your freedom.” And then the rest.” None of them had it because of the problems that life In a city like Ziadna, you managed to finish high school, emphasizes Kamel. He himself points out that he had to study medicine abroad, in Romania. He asks Qatar, Egypt and even Hamas for help so that his uncle and cousin are released.
View of the town of Ziadna, a Bedouin town unrecognized by Israel, where Aisha and Bilal live.Luis de Vega
“Hamza is a great friend of mine and I miss him very much,” he says as he shows pictures of both of them on the phone screen and remembers the last hours they spent before the Hamas attack. Kamel explains that he is single and unattached, which can come as something of a shock given that at 30 he is in the shadow of Bedouin tradition. Hamza, he adds, got married in 2020 and, at 22, has a two-year-old son and a four-month-old daughter.
No one has moved their car since the kidnapping. He remains parked in front of his house. Part of his income from working with the cows will be used to rebuild this house, which, according to his cousin, has already been demolished twice by the Israeli authorities, who consider Ziadna, along with 36 other cities where about 80,000 Bedouins live, as illegal look at the city. Yousef’s house was also demolished four times, says Kamel.
The Bedouin population of Palestinian origin in the Negev Desert, which has resided in the area for centuries and which the Israeli government is attempting to separate from their traditional way of life, now numbers approximately 310,000 people. Two-thirds of these citizens live below the poverty line, a rate that is three times higher than the national average. There, Kamel Ziadna tries to realize a double dream: adding pediatrics to his general practice training and, also tied to his ancestral weight, getting married and having children. “It’s not easy to be Bedouin, but we have to be Bedouin,” he says.
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