Freed from Gaza, returning to a village set for demolition

KARKUR, ISRAEL An Israeli hostage rescued from Gaza returned to a hero’s welcome tinged with a bitter reality: Much of the small village he calls home — Karkur — is targeted for demolition.

- MELANIE LIDMAN

Qaid Farhad Alkadi, 52, is one of Israel’s roughly 300,000 Bedouin Arabs, a poor and traditionally nomadic minority that has a complicated relationship with the government and often faces discrimination. While they are Israeli citizens and some serve in the army, about a third of Bedouins, including Alkadi, live in villages the government considers illegal and wants to tear down.

Since November, about 70 per cent of Karkur residents have been told the government plans to raze their homes because they were built without permits in a “protected forest” not zoned for housing, according to a lawyer representing them. Alkadi’s family hasn’t received a notice, but the looming mass displacement of this close-knit community has cast a pall on what has otherwise been a joyous 24 hours.

“It’s so exciting, we didn’t know if he’ll come back alive or not,” said Muhammad Abu Tailakh, the head of Karkur’s local council and a public health lecturer at Ben Gurion University in nearby Beersheba. “But the good news is also a bit complicated, because of everything that’s going on.”

Alkadi was greeted by dozens of well-wishers last week — and a crush of media. He was released from the hospital and returned home a day after his dramatic rescue, which he recounted in appreciative phone calls with Israel’s prime minister and president.

Neighbours and family erected a huge tent in his honour, and served tea and coffee from the early morning as they eagerly awaited his arrival. When the clean-shaven but gaunt Alkadi arrived — seemingly overwhelmed by the attention after 326 days in captivity, some of it an underground tunnel — he spoke with reporters and pleaded with Israeli leaders to free all the hostages.

“It does not matter if they are Arab or Jewish, all have a family waiting for them,” said Alkadi, a father of 11 who was kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7 while working as a security guard at a packing plant near the Gaza border.