What is driving the rise in marriages between Syrian women and local men in neighboring countries?

Analysis What is driving the rise in marriages between Syrian women and local men in neighboring countries?
1 / 2
Grooms and brides are seen during a mass wedding ceremony that organized by Barzani Charity Foundation in Iraqi Kurdish Regional Government's Irbil, Iraq on April 07, 2017. (Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
Analysis What is driving the rise in marriages between Syrian women and local men in neighboring countries?
2 / 2
Grooms and brides are seen during a mass wedding ceremony that organized by Barzani Charity Foundation in Iraqi Kurdish Regional Government's Irbil, Iraq on April 07, 2017. (Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
Short Url
Updated 21 July 2024
Follow

What is driving the rise in marriages between Syrian women and local men in neighboring countries?

What is driving the rise in marriages between Syrian women and local men in neighboring countries?
  • More than a decade of war, displacement, hardship and uncertainty has chipped away at Syrian women’s sense of security
  • Many of these women agree to marry locals to avoid the harsh reality of being a single woman alone in a war-devastated country

LONDON: Informal advertisements for “affordable Syrian brides” have been circulating on Iraqi social media platforms in recent months, several of them perpetuating tropes about Syrian women with lines like: “Marry a Syrian woman for $100 and enjoy delectable dishes and an endearing dialect.”

The controversial posts, which have drawn local media attention, are captioned as though they are advertising chattel. One reads: “You can hear to’borni (a Syrian term of endearment) at home for as little as 500,000 dinars” — the equivalent of $380.

Men promoting the trend lament the exorbitant mahrs requested by Iraqi women, often ranging from $10,000 to $20,000, locals told Arab News. On top of this, they say, prospective Iraqi brides will also often request property, expensive jewelry and cars.

Mahr is a mandatory gift from a groom to his bride in Muslim societies as a form of security and respect, often with legal significance in marriage contracts.




Grooms and Syrian Kurdish brides during a mass wedding ceremony organized by the Barzani Charity Foundation in Irbil, Iraqi Kurdistan. File photo for illustrative purpose only. (Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

The sheer volume of online posts, especially on the video platform TikTok, suggests the trend is genuine. Commentators have expressed outrage at the posts, finding the rhetoric demeaning to both Syrian and Iraqi women.

More than a decade of violence, displacement, economic hardship and uncertainty has already chipped away at Syrian women’s dignity. Now, in neighboring countries where they have sought safety and economic security, they endure a form of commodification.

Many Syrian women, finding themselves as the sole breadwinners for their families, have sought employment in neighboring states, including Iraq, as the economic situation worsens in their home country.

Faced with the harsh reality of being a single woman alone in a conservative society and in countries where the law offers limited protection, some have agreed to marry locals for meager mahrs, if any at all.

Sattam Jadaan Al-Dandah, Syria’s ambassador to Iraq, revealed in January that in 2023 alone, some 5,000 marriages between Syrian women and Iraqi men had been documented.




Syria’s ambassador to Iraq, Sattam Jadaan Al-Dandah, has confirmed the trend about Syrian refugee women being married to Iraqis. (Supplied)

According to the UN Development Programme’s Gender Inequality Index for 2024, Iraq is the fifth worst country in the world for women and girls despite many recent efforts to address gender inequality.

“Syrian women in countries like Iraq, where the law does not provide adequate protection, often find themselves exposed to harassment, exploitation and even trafficking,” Mouna Khaity, a UK-based Syrian feminist and researcher, told Arab News.

“The main reasons Syrian women are agreeing to such arrangements — many even seeking them — in almost all neighboring host countries are the need for protection and the desire to escape a deteriorating economic situation.”

Thirteen years of conflict and economic sanctions have plunged 90 percent of Syria’s population below the poverty line, creating a new social norm where families struggle to survive without women’s labor.




Many Syrian women have found themselves as the sole breadwinners for their families after years of war in their country. (AFP)

“Under relatively normal circumstances women and girls’ communities and families would provide a level of protection, even though this sometimes entails unwanted intervention or even control,” said Khaity.

The erosion of this protection due to displacement has left Syrian women and girls more vulnerable.

About 5.4 million Syrians live in five countries across the region — Turkiye, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt — with more than 70 percent of them being women, according to UN figures.




After 13 years of civil conflict, lack of international funding has severely undercut the provision of basic services such as water, waste disposal and sanitation in displacement camps in northwest Syria, according to the United Nations. (AFP)

“Women in need of protection will accept a lower mahr compared to women who live within the protection of their families in their home countries,” said Khaity.

However, a woman’s decision to pursue marriage for economic reasons “is often not a personal choice but a collective family decision, with women — even girls — being persuaded this is an opportunity for a better life.

“This is often seen in displacement camps, where women don’t even have the option to choose, and marriage to a local can be perceived as a convenient way to transform from a charity recipient to a dignified and protected woman.”

The Norwegian Refugee Council in 2016 reported an alarming increase in occurence of child marriages within Syrian refugee communities, with girls as young as 13 being married off.




Grooms and Syrian Kurdish brides during a mass wedding ceremony organized by the Barzani Charity Foundation in Irbil, Iraqi Kurdistan. File photo for illustrative purpose only. (Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

A 2023 report by American Near East Refugee Aid, an NGO that addresses the needs of refugees and vulnerable communities in Palestine, Lebanon and Jordan, found that 41 percent of Syrian refugee women aged 20 to 24 in Lebanon were married before turning 18.

Stressing that the situation has been created by “layers of discrimination and injustices,” Khaity said the blame for such marriages should not be placed solely on individuals or families, but on “entire systems” that have normalized the exploitation of Syrian women through a lack of accountability.

“Neighboring countries have not been seeking to integrate Syrian refugees, who are being excluded by local communities and exploited by politicians for economic benefits,” she said.

Deeply rooted gender-related economic inequalities have long disadvantaged women, and the war has only widened this gap, despite increasing the proportion of women who earn an income.




Many Syrian women have found themselves as the sole breadwinners for their families after years of war in their country. (AFP)

“Middle Eastern societies have historically accumulated wealth in men’s hands, forcing women to be largely dependent on men,” said Khaity, adding that this has been achieved through “political systems, social norms and religious institutions.”

“Obedience to husbands has often been linked to men’s financial superiority and dominance, and consequently women’s reliance on them. There are financial resources that women cannot access.”

She added: “The war has deepened inequities, impoverished the majority of the population, heightened women’s vulnerability and displaced millions — all of which has devastated Syrian society.

“Therefore, many Syrian women have sought marriages with locals in host countries as a means to protect themselves, and often their families too, from all kinds of indignities — particularly in societies that have shown them hostility.”




The erosion of this protection due to displacement has left Syrian women and girls more vulnerable. (AFP)

Since the outbreak of civil war in 2011, which forced millions to flee abroad, Syrians in Lebanon, Turkiye and Jordan have repeatedly encountered waves of violence and threats of deportation.

Douna Haj Ahmed, a UK-based Syrian human rights activist, believes this new status quo “has created a form of modern slavery where Syrian women are commodified and traded under the guise of marriage.”

She told Arab News that the marriage arrangements promoted on Iraqi social media “reduce women to mere objects for sale,” calling the phenomenon “a stark reminder of how conflict and poverty can lead to the resurgence of exploitative systems akin to slavery.”

She added: “Such exploitation is not only unethical but also profoundly inhumane. Marriage should be grounded in mutual respect and genuine affection, not in exploiting the more vulnerable party’s needs.”

Thirteen years of conflict and displacement have placed Syrian women in “a class of their own,” said Khaity. “There is tolerance for the dehumanization of Syrian women, who are now perceived as having fewer rights.”

Both activists also believe Syrian women have been commodified by deceptive TV dramas. Iraqi TikTok posts promoting marriage to Syrian women even feature clips from controversial Syrian programs portraying Damascene women as part of an obedient, attentive harem.




Syrian women had been portrayed in a popular drama series as the obedient servants to their husband, doing only domestic chores such as cooking and cleaning by day, and providing pleasuring by night. (AFP/File)

Khaity says the drama genre known in Syria as “Al-Bi’a Al-Shamiyeh” — or Damascene culture — has propagated an “untrue, historically inaccurate, and unfair image of Syrian women and their role in society.”

Since the 1990s, numerous Syrian dramas have portrayed Damascene women as ravishing beauties with an innate talent for cooking, household management and seduction. They scurry to attend to their husbands’ needs, rub their feet, shower them with affection, and even hand feed them.

The popularity of Syrian drama series across the Arabic-speaking world has played a significant role in creating and reinforcing such harmful stereotypes.

“For decades, Syrian drama has perpetuated an image of the Syrian woman as the obedient servant to her husband, whose life revolves around meeting his needs through cooking and cleaning by day, and pampering and pleasuring by night,” said Haj Ahmed.

“This negative portrayal has reinforced outdated and misleading ideas about women’s roles in Syrian society.”




Syria's long-running war has rendered hundreds of thousands of women and children vulnerable to abuses. (AFP/File)

Haj Ahmed said that amid harsh economic circumstances, “many young men in Arab countries have seen the war in Syria as an opportunity to fulfill unhealthy desires for marriage.

“They have exploited the vulnerability of Syrian girls caused by war and poverty, forcing some Syrian families to make harsh compromises and accept any suitor for their daughters in a desperate bid to alleviate the family’s financial burden.”

She added that the social media trend promoting Syrian brides for $100 “goes beyond discrimination and hate speech” to “reflect the patriarchal mentality that objectifies women, particularly in times of war and disaster.

“This narrative confirms that women are among the first to suffer in such situations. What Syrian women are experiencing is a recurring scenario for women in all conflict zones.”
 

 


’I thought I’d died.’ How land mines are continuing to claim lives in post-Assad Syria

’I thought I’d died.’ How land mines are continuing to claim lives in post-Assad Syria
Updated 5 sec ago
Follow

’I thought I’d died.’ How land mines are continuing to claim lives in post-Assad Syria

’I thought I’d died.’ How land mines are continuing to claim lives in post-Assad Syria
IDLIB: Suleiman Khalil was harvesting olives in a Syrian orchard with two friends four months ago, unaware the soil beneath them still hid deadly remnants of war.
The trio suddenly noticed a visible mine lying on the ground. Panicked, Khalil and his friends tried to leave, but he stepped on a land mine and it exploded. His friends, terrified, ran to find an ambulance, but Khalil, 21, thought they had abandoned him.
“I started crawling, then the second land mine exploded,” Khalil told The Associated Press. “At first, I thought I’d died. I didn’t think I would survive this.”
Khalil’s left leg was badly wounded in the first explosion, while his right leg was blown off from above the knee in the second. He used his shirt to tourniquet the stump and screamed for help until a soldier nearby heard him and rushed for his aid.
“There were days I didn’t want to live anymore,” Khalil said, sitting on a thin mattress, his amputated leg still wrapped in a white cloth four months after the incident. Khalil, who is from the village of Qaminas, in the southern part of Syria’s Idlib province, is engaged and dreams of a prosthetic limb so he can return to work and support his family again.
While the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war came to an end with the fall of Bashar Assad on Dec. 8, war remnants continue to kill and maim. Contamination from land mines and explosive remnants has killed at least 249 people, including 60 children, and injured another 379 since Dec. 8, according to INSO, an international organization which coordinates safety for aid workers.
Mines and explosive remnants — widely used since 2011 by Syrian government forces, its allies, and armed opposition groups — have contaminated vast areas, many of which only became accessible after the Assad government’s collapse, leading to a surge in the number of land mine casualties, according to a recent Human Rights Watch (HRW) report.
‘It will take ages to clear them all’
Prior to Dec. 8, land mines and explosive remnants of war also frequently injured or killed civilians returning home and accessing agricultural land.
“Without urgent, nationwide clearance efforts, more civilians returning home to reclaim critical rights, lives, livelihoods, and land will be injured and killed,” said Richard Weir, a senior crisis and conflict researcher at HRW.
Experts estimate that tens of thousands of land mines remain buried across Syria, particularly in former front-line regions like rural Idlib.
“We don’t even have an exact number,” said Ahmad Jomaa, a member of a demining unit under Syria’s defense ministry. “It will take ages to clear them all.”
Jomaa spoke while scanning farmland in a rural area east of Maarrat Al-Numan with a handheld detector, pointing at a visible anti-personnel mine nestled in dry soil.
“This one can take off a leg,” he said. “We have to detonate it manually.”
Psychological trauma and broader harm
Farming remains the main source of income for residents in rural Idlib, making the presence of mines a daily hazard. Days earlier a tractor exploded nearby, severely injuring several farm workers, Jomaa said. “Most of the mines here are meant for individuals and light vehicles, like the ones used by farmers,” he said.
Jomaa’s demining team began dismantling the mines immediately after the previous government was ousted. But their work comes at a steep cost.
“We’ve had 15 to 20 (deminers) lose limbs, and around a dozen of our brothers were killed doing this job,” he said. Advanced scanners, needed to detect buried or improvised devices, are in short supply, he said. Many land mines are still visible to the naked eye, but others are more sophisticated and harder to detect.
Land mines not only kill and maim but also cause long-term psychological trauma and broader harm, such as displacement, loss of property, and reduced access to essential services, HRW says.
The rights group has urged the transitional government to establish a civilian-led mine action authority in coordination with the UN Mine Action Service (UNMAS) to streamline and expand demining efforts.
Syria’s military under the Assad government laid explosives years ago to deter opposition fighters. Even after the government seized nearby territories, it made little effort to clear the mines it left behind.
‘Every day someone is dying’
Standing before his brother’s grave, Salah Sweid holds up a photo on his phone of Mohammad, smiling behind a pile of dismantled mines. “My mother, like any other mother would do, warned him against going,” Salah said. “But he told them, ‘If I don’t go and others don’t go, who will? Every day someone is dying.’”
Mohammad was 39 when he died on Jan. 12 while demining in a village in Idlib. A former Syrian Republican Guard member trained in planting and dismantling mines, he later joined the opposition during the uprising, scavenging weapon debris to make arms.
He worked with Turkish units in Azaz, a city in northwest Syria, using advanced equipment, but on the day he died, he was on his own. As he defused one mine, another hidden beneath it detonated. After Assad’s ouster, mines littered his village in rural Idlib. He had begun volunteering to clear them — often without proper equipment — responding to residents’ pleas for help, even on holidays when his demining team was off duty, his brother said.
For every mine cleared by people like Mohammad, many more remain.
In a nearby village, Jalal Al-Maarouf, 22, was tending to his goats three days after the Assad government’s collapse when he stepped on a mine. Fellow shepherds rushed him to a hospital, where doctors amputated his left leg.
He has added his name to a waiting list for a prosthetic, “but there’s nothing so far,” he said from his home, gently running a hand over the smooth edge of his stump. “As you can see, I can’t walk.” The cost of a prosthetic limb is in excess of $3,000 and far beyond his means.

Iran and US conclude second round of negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear program in Rome

Iran and US conclude second round of negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear program in Rome
Updated 20 April 2025
Follow

Iran and US conclude second round of negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear program in Rome

Iran and US conclude second round of negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear program in Rome
  • President Donald Trump has been pushing for rapid deal with Iran while threatening military action against it
  • Talks even happening represents a historic moment, given the decades of enmity between the two countries

ROME: Iran and the United States will begin having experts meet to discuss details of a possible deal over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program, the top Iranian diplomat said Saturday after a second round of negotiations in Rome.
The comments by Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who met with US Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff for several hours, suggest movement in the talks. The experts will meet in Oman before Araghchi and Witkoff meet again in Oman on April 26, Araghchi said.
There was no immediate readout from the US side after the meeting at the Omani Embassy in Rome’s Camilluccia neighborhood. However, President Donald Trump has been pushing for a rapid deal with Iran while threatening military action against it.
“The talks were held in a constructive environment and I can say that is moving forward,” Araghchi told Iranian state television. “I hope that we will be in a better position after the technical talks.”
He added: “This time, we succeeded to reach a better understanding about a sort of principles and aims.”
Iranian officials described the talks as indirect, like those last weekend in Muscat, Oman, with Omani Foreign Minister Badr Al-Busaidi shuttling between them in different rooms.
That talks are even happening represents a historic moment, given the decades of enmity between the two countries since the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the US Embassy hostage crisis. Trump, in his first term, unilaterally withdrew from Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers in 2018, setting off years of attacks and negotiations that failed to restore the accord that drastically limited Tehran’s enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.
Talks come as tensions rise in the Mideast
At risk is a possible American or Israeli military strike on Iran’s nuclear sites, or the Iranians following through on their threats to pursue an atomic weapon. Meanwhile, tensions in the Middle East have spiked over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip and after US airstrikes targeting Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels killed more than 70 people and wounded dozens more.
“I’m for stopping Iran, very simply, from having a nuclear weapon,” Trump said Friday. “I want Iran to be great and prosperous and terrific.”
Araghchi met Saturday morning with Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani ahead of the talks with Witkoff.
Rafael Mariano Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, also met Tajani on Saturday. Grossi’s agency would likely be key in verifying compliance by Iran should a deal be reached, as it did with the 2015 accord Iran reached with world powers.
Tajani said Italy was ready “to facilitate the continuation of the talks even for sessions at the technical level.”
A diplomat deal “is built patiently, day after day, with dialogue and mutual respect,” he said in a statement.
Araghchi, Witkoff both traveled ahead of talks
Both men have been traveling in recent days. Witkoff had been in Paris for talks about Ukraine as Russia’s full-scale war there grinds on. Araghchi paid a visit to Moscow, where he met with officials, including Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Russia, one of the world powers involved in Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal, could be a key participant in any future deal reached between Tehran and Washington. Analysts suggest Moscow could potentially take custody of Iran’s uranium enriched to 60 percent purity — a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90 percent.
Oman’s capital, Muscat, hosted the first round of negotiations between Araghchi and Witkoff last weekend, which saw the two men meet face to face after indirect talks. Oman, a sultanate on the eastern edge of the Arabian Peninsula, has long served as an interlocutor between Iran and the West.
Ahead of the talks, however, Iran seized on comments by Witkoff first suggesting Iran could enrich uranium at 3.67 percent, then later saying that all enrichment must stop. Ali Shamkhani, an adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, wrote on X before the talks that Iran would not accept giving up its enrichment program like Libya, or agreeing to using uranium enriched abroad for its nuclear program.
“Iran has come for a balanced agreement, not a surrender,” he wrote.
Iran seeks a deal to steady a troubled economy
Iran’s internal politics are still inflamed over the mandatory hijab, or headscarf, with women still ignoring the law on the streets of Tehran. Rumors also persist over the government potentially increasing the cost of subsidized gasoline in the country, which has sparked nationwide protests in the past
Iran’s rial currency plunged to over 1 million to a US dollar earlier this month. The currency has improved with the talks, however, something Tehran hopes will continue.
Meanwhile, two used Airbus A330-200 long sought by Iran’s flag carrier, Iran Air, arrived at Tehran’s Mehrabad International Airport on Thursday, flight-tracking data analyzed by The Associated Press showed. The planes, formerly of China’s Hainan Airlines, had been in Muscat and re-registered to Iran.
The aircraft have Rolls-Royce engines, which include significant American parts and servicing. Such a transaction would need approval from the US Treasury given sanctions on Iran. The State Department and Treasury did not respond to requests for comment.
Under the 2015 deal, Iran could purchase new aircraft and had lined up tens of billions of dollars in deals with Airbus and Boeing Co. However, the manufacturers backed away from the deals over Trump’s threats to the nuclear accord.


Neighbours improvise first aid for wounded in besieged Sudan city

Neighbours improvise first aid for wounded in besieged Sudan city
Updated 20 April 2025
Follow

Neighbours improvise first aid for wounded in besieged Sudan city

Neighbours improvise first aid for wounded in besieged Sudan city
  • the Saudi Hospital is the only partially functioning one now, according to a medical source there, and even that has come under repeated attack.

Port Sudan: For a week, eight-year-old Mohamed has suffered the pain of shrapnel stuck in his arm. But he is one of the lucky ones in Sudan’s western city El-Fasher, which is under paramilitary attack.
“One of our neighbors used to be a nurse. She helped us stop the bleeding,” Mohamed’s father, Issa Said, 27, told AFP via satellite connection under a total communications blackout.
“But his arm is swollen and he can’t sleep at night from the pain.”
Like an estimated one million more people trapped in the city under a year-long siege by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), Said cannot get to a hospital for emergency care.
With only the most meagre supplies remaining in El-Fasher, his family is among those whose only medical help has come from neighbors and family members who improvise.
In its quest to seize the North Darfur state capital — the only major Darfur city it has not conquered during two years of war with Sudan’s army — the RSF has launched attack after attack, which have been repelled by army and allied forces.
Even if people were to brave the streets, the Saudi Hospital is the only partially functioning one now, according to a medical source there, and even that has come under repeated attack.
Humanitarian operations in El-Fasher have been severely disrupted due to “access constraints, a critical fuel shortage and a volatile security environment,” with health services particularly affected, the United Nations’ humanitarian agency OCHA said.
’Opened their homes’
Mohamed, an aid coordinator who fled to El-Fasher after getting shot in the thigh during an RSF attack days ago on the nearby famine-hit Zamzam displacement camp, estimates hundreds of injured civilians are trapped in the city.
According to aid sources, hundreds of thousands have fled Zamzam for the city, which is already on the brink of mass starvation according to a UN-backed assessment.
Yet the people of El-Fasher have “opened their homes to the wounded,” Mohamed told AFP, requesting to be identified by his first name for safety.
“If you have the money, you send someone to buy clean gauze or painkillers if they can find any, but you have to make do with what you have,” said Mohamed, whose leg wound meant he had to be carried the 15 kilometers (nine miles) from Zamzam to the city, a journey that took hours.
In crowded living rooms and kitchens, civilians with barely any medical training cobble together emergency first aid, using household items and local medicinal plants to treat burns, gunshot wounds and shrapnel injuries.
Another victim, Mohamed Abakar, 29, said he was fetching water for his family when a bullet pierced his leg.
The limb immediately broke underneath him, and a neighbor dragged him into his home, fashioning him a splint out of a few pieces of wood and cloth.
“Even if it heals my broken leg, the bullet is still inside,” Abakar told AFP, also by satellite link.
Table salt as disinfectant
By Monday, the RSF’s recent attacks on El-Fasher and surrounding displacement camps had killed more than 400 people, according to the UN.
At least 825,000 children are trapped in “hell on Earth” in the city and its environs, the UN children’s agency UNICEF has warned.
The people of El-Fasher have suffered a year of RSF siege in a city the Sudanese military has also bombed from the air.
Residents have taken to hiding from the shelling in makeshift bunkers, which are often just hastily dug holes topped with bags of sand.
But not everyone makes it in time.
On Wednesday, a shell broke through Hanaa Hamad’s home, shrapnel tearing apart her husband’s abdomen before they could scramble to safety.
“A neighbor and I treated him as best we could. We disinfected the wound with table salt and we managed to stop the bleeding,” the 34-year-old mother of four told AFP.
But by morning, he had succumbed to his injuries, too severe for his wife and neighbor to handle.
Trying to recover from his leg wound, the aid coordinator Mohamed pleaded from his sick bed for “urgent intervention from anyone who can to save people.”
The medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) on Friday called for aid airdrops.
“If the roads to El-Fasher are blocked, then air operations must be launched to bring food and medicines to the estimated one million people trapped there and being starved,” head of mission Rasmane Kabore said.


Father of American hostage in Gaza hopeful he is still alive

Father of American hostage in Gaza hopeful he is still alive
Updated 20 April 2025
Follow

Father of American hostage in Gaza hopeful he is still alive

Father of American hostage in Gaza hopeful he is still alive
  • The armed wing of Hamas said on Saturday it did not know the fate of Alexander, after noting that the guard holding him was killed

WASHINGTON: The father of a US-Israeli hostage held in Gaza said on Saturday he remains hopeful his 21-year-old son was still alive after Hamas said it could not account for his status.
Adi Alexander, whose son Edan was serving in the Israeli army when he was captured on October 7, 2023, called on the United States to engage in direct talks to free the remaining hostages – dead and alive – abducted during the deadly attack launched by Hamas two years ago in southern Israel. “I think we should engage back with them directly and see what can be done in regards to my son, four American dead hostages and everybody else,” the father said in an interview on Saturday.

HIGHLIGHTS

• Father urges US to engage in direct talks for hostages

• Hamas claims uncertainty over Edan Alexander’s fate

• US State Department demands immediate release of hostages

“It seems like the negotiations are stalled, everything is stuck and we are kind of back to a year ago,” he added. “It’s really concerning.” Hamas had previously agreed to release Edan Alexander, believed to be the last surviving American hostage held by the militant Palestinian group, as well as the bodies of four other Americans it captured on October 7, 2023. The armed wing of Hamas said on Saturday it did not know the fate of Alexander, after noting that the guard holding him was killed. Reuters could not verify Hamas’ claim.
Hamas abducted Edan Alexander when he was 19 during its attack that killed nearly 1,200 people and triggered Israel’s ongoing incursion in Gaza, the Palestinian enclave controlled by Hamas.
Edan, who holds dual nationality, grew up in New Jersey. His father said his son was an “all-American kid, great athlete ..., such a loving, loving boy” who found himself in “the wrong place, wrong time.”
Hamas recently released an undated video, purportedly of Edan. His father Adi said, “He looked very scary to us — just a horrible, horrible video.”
A hostage video is, by definition, made under duress and the statements in it are usually coerced, according to international law groups and human rights experts.
He said if he could speak to his son now, he would tell him, “Just believe. You know, nobody forgot about you. Definitely not your parents, and everybody is fighting for your release on the highest level in the States and I believe also in Israel.”
Fifty-nine hostages remain in Gaza. Fewer than half of them are believed to be still alive.
A US State Department spokesperson had no comment on the status of Alexander but reiterated that Hamas must immediately release him and all remaining hostages, and that Hamas “bears sole responsibility for the war, and for the resumption of hostilities.”

 


Israeli PM says to return hostages without giving in to ‘Hamas dictates’

Israeli PM says to return hostages without giving in to ‘Hamas dictates’
Updated 19 April 2025
Follow

Israeli PM says to return hostages without giving in to ‘Hamas dictates’

Israeli PM says to return hostages without giving in to ‘Hamas dictates’
  • “I believe we can bring our hostages home without surrendering to Hamas’s dictates,” Netanyahu said
  • “We are at a critical stage of the campaign, and at this point, we need patience”

JERUSALEM: Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Saturday to bring home the remaining hostages in Gaza without yielding to Hamas’ demands, insisting the military campaign in the Palestinian territory had reached a “critical stage.”
“I believe we can bring our hostages home without surrendering to Hamas’s dictates,” Netanyahu said, in his first comments since Hamas, seeking a permanent end to the Gaza war, rejected a new truce proposal from Israel.
“We are at a critical stage of the campaign, and at this point, we need patience and determination to win.”
The remarks drew a swift rebuttal from an Israeli campaign group representing the hostages’ families, which accused Netanyahu of having “no plan” for securing the captives’ freedom.
“There is one clear, feasible, and urgent solution that can be achieved now: reach a deal that will bring everyone home — even if it means stopping the fighting,” Hostages and Missing Families Forum said in a statement.
Netanyahu, however, insisted that ending the war now would embolden the country’s enemies.
“Ending the war under these surrender conditions would send a message to all of Israel’s enemies: that abducting Israelis can bring Israel to its knees. It would prove that terrorism pays — and that message would endanger the entire free world,” he said.
Hamas, Netanyahu said, was “demanding the end of the war and the continuation of its rule,” as well as a full Israeli withdrawal, “which would enable Hamas to rearm and plan more attacks against us.”
“If we commit to ending the war, we will not be able to resume fighting in Gaza,” he said.
“So I ask you — did our soldiers fight in vain? Did our heroes fall and suffer for nothing?“