Freed hostage Eli Sharabi, who was released in February after 491 days in Hamas captivity, said this week that he and other hostages understood while they were in Gaza that they would have been freed a lot sooner if it weren’t for the current makeup of Israel’s government.
“We didn’t have a doubt, even when we were in a tunnel 50 meters underground — and the four of us [hostages] discussed this exact point — that if there was a different political makeup [of the Israeli government], we would’ve been freed a long time ago,” Sharabi told Channel 12, in an interview that will air in full on Friday.
“This was what we said. It was clear to us [then], and it has been more clear to us since our release,” said Sharabi.
It was not immediately clear from the excerpt who the other three hostages were, but it is known that Sharabi was held at first alongside a Thai worker and later with fellow Israeli hostages including Alon Ohel — who is still captive — and Eliya Cohen and Or Levy, who were also released.
Sharabi was also held briefly alongside Ori Danino and Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who were later murdered by their captors in August 2024.
After Sharabi’s +statement, the Channel 12 anchor pressed: “That is to say, if there were a different government, [all] the hostages would have been released already?”
“Without a doubt,” Sharabi responded.
Sharabi, a national consensus figure who has just written the first book by a returned hostage of this war, has to date has largely avoided criticizing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. He was even tapped by Israel’s Foreign Ministry to testify before the UN Security Council earlier this year.
Netanyahu asserts that freeing the hostages is a top priority of the government, but he has also said that defeating Hamas is of greater importance, and has accordingly rejected Hamas offers to release all the hostages at once in exchange for a permanent end to the war, arguing that doing so would leave the terror group in power and posing a threat to Israel.
The stance has put him at odds with the majority of Israelis, as polls suggest most support ending the war in exchange for the release of the remaining 56 hostages. But Netanyahu also faces pressure from his far-right coalition partners who have threatened to collapse the government if he were to agree to such a deal.
Polls for months have also shown that if elections were held today, the current coalition parties would be far from having the majority needed to form a government.
Sharabi, 52, was abducted from his home in Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7, 2023, during Hamas’s onslaught. His wife, Lianne, and daughters Noiya, 16, and Yahel, 13, were murdered that day. His brother Yossi was also kidnapped and murdered by his captors, who still hold his body.
Sharabi was released on February 8 as part of a temporary ceasefire deal brokered by Qatar, Egypt, and the US that collapsed after Israel declined to move forward with talks for a permanent end to the war.
In the same, one-minute excerpt of the Channel 12 interview, the freed hostage spoke of his Hamas captors’ hopelessness as the war ground on.
“They cried almost every day,” he recalled. “They cried into their mattresses and their pillows. They’re frustrated, they’re in despair. They can’t believe their worst nightmare — that this war should go on for such a long time.”
Terror groups in the Gaza Strip are holding 56 hostages, made up of 55 of the 251 abducted by Hamas-led terrorists on October 7, 2023, and the body of a soldier killed in 2014 and held in the Strip since then.
They include the bodies of at least 33 confirmed dead by the IDF, and 20 are believed to be alive. There are grave concerns for the well-being of three others, Israeli officials have said.