"I cried out of happiness and also out of pain," rescued hostage Qaid Farhan Alkadi shared regarding his experience in watching the three female hostages return home earlier this week in an interview with Walla on Thursday.
Five months have passed since Qaid Farhan Alkadi, 52-year-old from Rahat, was rescued from Hamas captivity after being found in a tunnel in the Tel Sultan neighborhood in the southern Gaza Strip.
Alkadi is trying to recover, and this past Sunday, he joined the rest of the country in watching the first release of hostages as part of the initial stage of the hostage deal.
"I'm happy that the girls were released, but I'm in pain for those who are still there. I pray every day that the hostages will return. Everything must stop until they come back. Everything."
Alkadi shared the feelings he experienced in captivity. "When you're in Gaza, you lose hope. The moment they took me down into the tunnels, I left my hop above ground. I didn't think I had even a one percent chance of returning alive to my family. I'm grateful to everyone, and I thank the security forces who worked to get me out of the tunnel."
Alongside the pain felt by the hostages themselves, their families experience unrelenting agony, Farhan said.
"My children told me they would sit down to eat and then wonder, 'What if Dad isn't eating right now?'" he shared.
"When they went to sleep and woke up in the middle of the night, they questioned whether I was even sleeping at all. The families go through hell.
"There's no way to describe the pain they endure," he affirmed, adding, "If politicians could feel even half of what the families feel, they would have brought everyone back a long time ago, even those who are no longer alive. They need to bring them back to give the families closure."
Farhan also addressed the death of his neighbors, Youssef and Hamza Al Ziyadne, whose bodies were recovered from Rafah earlier in January.
"I hoped they were alive. We saw the list and had already started planning how we would celebrate, and the next day, we received the heartbreaking news," he says.
When he visited the Al Ziyadne family this week to offer condolences, Farhan met with the chairman of the National Unity Party, MK Benny Gantz. Farhan said he asked Gantz to support Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu until the deal is fully completed.
"I told him he must support Netanyahu until everyone is brought back. This is not the time for petty politics. It's time to unite. The war doesn't differentiate between Jews, Bedouins, and Druze. We need to stand together and set politics aside to bring the hostages home," he said.
'Bring everyone back'
"You need to do everything possible to bring everyone back," Alkadi said, addressing the government. "If I had stayed in captivity for another month and a half, I wouldn't have survived. What about the girls who are still in Gaza? If I was treated humiliatingly, what about them?"
Since returning from captivity, Farhan has been receiving medical treatment for a leg wound he sustained after being shot, as well as psychological therapy.
"The embrace I’ve received from everyone is incredible. Since I returned, I’ve met amazing people who have become my friends. I’ve been busy talking to the families of the hostages, trying to give them hope," he said.
"My mother and I pray five times a day for their release. She tells me that just as her son came back, so too should everyone else. What a mother goes through when her son or daughter is in Gaza—it’s madness," he concluded.