Edan Alexander was kept hostage underground for 583 days in the tunnels beneath Gaza. After he was released on Monday evening, he stood in a plain white room on an Israeli military base as his mother rushed in. They hugged and cried with joy and wept.
Adi Alexander, Edan’s father, wanted to join their embrace. Instead he waited down the hall. For more than a year and a half, Mr. Alexander had relied on discipline to survive the ordeal of his son’s capture.
Of the 251 people Hamas took captive during its attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, 12 had American citizenship. Mr. Alexander’s 20-year-old son was the last of the 12 still held hostage. Israeli authorities estimate that 59 hostages remain. Dozens, including four American citizens, are presumed to be dead.
“We never lost hope,” Mr. Alexander said on Wednesday, during an interview after his son’s release. “I could not allow myself to think any other way.”
Now, with his son practically right in front of him, Mr. Alexander said that he steeled himself once more.
“I can’t go and cry in front in him,” Mr. Alexander recounted. So he paused for a few minutes to let his wife and oldest son hug in the room down the hall. “I have to stay strong.”
Edan Alexander grew up in New Jersey, where he was a star athlete on the Tenafly High School swim team. In 2022, during his senior year, he joined Garin Tzabar, a program run by the Israel Scouts that prepares young people from around the world to join the Israel Defense Forces.
He was assigned to the infantry, and he arrived at a small military outpost about two miles from the Gaza border in September 2023, weeks before the Oct. 7 attacks.
His time as a prisoner left him physically changed.
At some point during Edan’s captivity, a tunnel collapsed around him, his father said, injuring Edan’s shoulder. He became gaunt from a diet of pita bread, rice, brown beans and black coffee, and his skin grew sallow from lack of sunshine and covered in red welts.
“His whole body has bedbug bites,” Mr. Alexander said. “His skin is in terrible condition.”
In the early days, his captors kept a bag over his head, Mr. Alexander said. Bombs dropped by the Israeli military shook the tunnels “like an earthquake.” Edan was handcuffed, beaten and interrogated, his father said. But the interrogations were futile, since Edan had been a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces for only 10 months at the time of his capture.
“There was nothing to interrogate him about,” Mr. Alexander said. “They knew about the arrangement of the I.D.F. much better than he did.”
Conditions improved slowly and intermittently. The tunnels were crowded at first. As more hostages were released or died, Mr. Alexander said, Edan had more space. Soon after a cease-fire was declared in mid-January this year, Edan was given beef and lamb to eat. After Donald J. Trump was inaugurated, Edan was moved to a different tunnel with access to a shower and television, Mr. Alexander said.
After all this time, Edan’s spirit seems unchanged, his father said. During their reunion at the military base, which was recorded in a video that later was released by the I.D.F., Edan cried as he hugged his mother, then shrieked with laughter as Mika, his sister, and Roy, his younger brother, entered the room.
“He was this goofy, funny guy,” when he joined the army, Mr. Alexander said. “He’s still funny. I don’t think he’s a different person. He is simply tired.”
After his family had endured so many months of waiting and fear, Mr. Alexander’s release came together quickly.
On Sunday at 12:50 p.m., Mr. Alexander was home in Tenafly, N.J., when he looked at his phone. He had missed eight calls from Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East. When they finally connected, Mr. Witkoff told Mr. Alexander to stand next to his wife and to put the phone on speaker. Then he delivered the news: In about 10 minutes, Hamas would announce Edan’s release. The family turned on the television in their living room. The news arrived right on time.
“We went absolutely nuts,” Mr. Alexander said.
Mr. and Ms. Alexander flew to Israel that afternoon, and by Monday evening they were reunited with Edan at Re’im military base. From there they were transported by helicopter to Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv, where, Mr. Alexander said, an entire floor was cleared to give Edan and his family privacy.
“We have the whole floor!” Mr. Alexander said. “The whole family is here. It’s amazing.”
Soon after they arrived, Edan and Mika took the elevator to the roof deck. He opened a bottle of Corona and posed for a selfie. By Wednesday, Edan was on his phone, FaceTiming with his cousins, his friends from high school and his girlfriend.
“He’s doing regular 21-year-old stuff,” Mr. Alexander said.
Christopher Maag is a reporter covering the New York City region for The Times.
The post Last U.S. Hostage in Gaza Is Reunited With Parents: ‘We Never Lost Hope’ appeared first on New York Times.
