The father of Emily Hand, the nine-year-old Irish-Israeli girl held hostage by Hamas for 50 days, has revealed his daughter was threatened with a knife during her ordeal.

Emily, who was released in November after being captured on Oct 7, suffers from panic attacks and often speaks in whispers, her father said in an interview with Israeli station Channel 12.

Thomas Hand, who is originally from Dublin, said: “She told me that they were threatened with a knife to be quiet. ‘If you don’t be quiet, we’ll kill you with this knife.’

“That’s an awful vision in your head as a parent, that she lived through that terror.”

Mr Hand, 63, added that Emily talks “very little” about her time in captivity.

“Just every now and then, [she gives] little snippets of information. But we’re not actually even allowed to question her in any way, from the psychiatrists’ point of view. They said, ‘No, whatever she wants to say voluntarily, let it come out’.”

Mr Hand would like to return to their home in Be’eri, where the Hamas attack took place.

“We all want to go back home. The houses are wrecked, destroyed. The blood of our friends on the roads, in the paths, in the grass, in the earth itself. But yeah, we still want to go back. We have to go back. If we don’t go back, they’ve won.”

However, his daughter is less keen, pointing out that it is “really, really close to the box” – the term the nine-year-old uses to refer to Gaza.

“On the other hand, all the friends are there. So I don’t know,” she said.

The interview comes amid reports of an emerging hostage release deal.

Mr Hand says any exchange to secure freedom for Israelis held captive in Gaza must be “reasonable” and expressed opposition to the prospect of releasing all Palestinian prisoners.

“If you ask me as a parent, as a friend of people who are captured, you have to say, do the deal. Give them whatever they want to get everyone back.

“If you ask me as someone in power making that deal, you have to make a reasonable deal. You can’t go in letting them think that they can ask for anything.

“You get the reports out of what the hostages do go through, and that just increases your pain, your nightmare. I was very lucky that I got my little girl back. You have to hope and pray for every other hostage still held there.”