“Missing people does not necessarily mean hostage or victim.” Did government spokesperson Olivier Véran want to be reassuring this Tuesday morning? Three days after the launch of an attack in Israel by the armed wing of Hamas, 13 French citizens are officially missing. Their loved ones have no signs of life.
The Quai d’Orsay confirmed to Le Figaro, this Tuesday, that it was still “without news of thirteen compatriots”, whose situation “is considered very worrying”. “Some have very probably been kidnapped”, added the ministry. While Hamas claimed to have around a hundred hostages in its hands, and Islamic Jihad around thirty others, “we can fear that there are victims and/or hostages among them,” admitted Olivier Véran on Franceinfo. For his part, Emmanuel Macron affirmed that France was in “very close coordination with the Israeli authorities” to find out if any French people were among the hostages.
Among the missing French people, the youngest identified at this stage is “a minor child of twelve years old”, informed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in its press release. This is Eitan, whose photo circulating on social networks moves Internet users. Coming from a family living in a kibbutz of Nir Oz in the south of Israel, a few hundred meters from the border with Gaza, the boy was kidnapped on Saturday by terrorists on motorcycles, with his parents and two sisters.
Ayala Yahalomi, Eitan’s aunt, confirmed to Le Parisien that her nephew was indeed French, just like his mother and his sisters, aged 10 and 1 year, who were also kidnapped on a motorcycle. “On one of them were Eitan’s mother and his two sisters (…), on the other, the boy,” explained the aunt. Only the women managed to escape during a stop before crossing the border.
The day after their kidnapping, the aunt posted on Facebook the photo of the boy as well as that of his father, who had also disappeared, with this caption: “Love of my life”. The aunt adds the description of the missing: Ohad, “49 years old, muscular physique, 1.90”, and Eitan, “12.5 years old, simply a boy prodigy”. “If anyone sees them in hospitals or has any information. Share,” she implores.
Among the others missing is the Franco-Israeli Céline Ben-David Nagar. This 32-year-old woman, mother of a six-month-old baby, was surprised by Hamas rockets as she joined the electro rave party near Gaza on Saturday, where 260 bodies were found after the terrorist attack.
Her brother Samuel, who testifies on BFMTV, worked hard to find her, calling hospitals in the area, in vain. He says that Céline was in her 4×4, less than 1 kilometer from the party, when the sirens sounded. “She went back towards the house, that’s where she spoke with her husband (on the phone Editor’s note.), she said: there are soldiers coming to help us! But it wasn’t soldiers, it was Hamas fighters who shot at them.”
“Her husband found the car yesterday, completely machine-gunned,” the brother continued, “with the Hamas motorcycle behind, blood from the driver. But no news from Céline. From Israel, her husband launched, in tears, a message on BFMTV. “Céline, if you see these images, your daughter Hélie is in good health.”
France 3 Provence-Alpes Côte d’Azur also identified a young man of Marseille origin among the missing. Aged 25, this Franco-Israeli born in Marseille had lived with his family in Israel for several years. His relatives said they had no news. The Jewish consistory of Marseille, which told France 3 that it received information “in dribs and drabs” about the young man, refuses to communicate at this stage.
Also read “Intelligence failure, Israeli response, importation of the conflict into France”: the analysis of Pierre Brochand (ex-DGSE) on the Hamas attack
Avidan T., a 26-year-old from Bordeaux who had been missing since Sunday, was finally found dead on Tuesday. According to Meyer Habib, an MP established outside France who alerted him to his disappearance, the Franco-Israeli, who had gone to the rave party in the desert, was indeed “massacred” by Hamas fighters.
MP Meyer Habib, for his part, fears that the toll of French victims will increase further, while around 87,000 French nationals live in Israel, not counting tourists.
If they are found to be hostages, how long will any negotiations for their release take? The last Franco-Israeli Hamas prisoner, Gilad Shalit, an army soldier kidnapped in 2006, remained in the hands of his captors for five years before being released.
