The Israeli man who climbed the border fence to cross into the Gaza Strip — and has not been heard from since — was identified on Wednesday as Jumaa Abu-Ghanima of the Bedouin village of Hasham Zana. With Abu-Ghanima’s crossing into Gaza, the number of Israeli citizens being held there is now three.
An official of the IDF’s Spokesperson’s Unit said that IDF lookouts spotted Abu-Ghanima on Tuesday night as he climbed the border fence. By the time infantry troops arrived, Abu-Ghanima was already deep inside Hamas-controlled territory and could not be extricated.
Abu-Ghanima is the second Israeli Bedouin citizen to cross into Gaza voluntarily, and the third Israeli citizen to do so in the past two years.
In September 2014, Israeli-Ethiopian civilian Avera Mengistu, 28, crossed the border into Gaza for unknown reasons and has been missing ever since. Three months later, Hisham al-Sayed, a Bedouin resident of Hura, crossed the border as well.
While officials of Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, have confirmed that the group is holding Mengistu and al-Sayed and that both men are alive, they have released no official statement about Abu-Ghanima’s fate.
Abu-Ghanima, Mengistu, and al-Sayed have several things in common. They are civilians who entered Gaza voluntarily and not during combat. But they may have something else in common: mental illness. Relatives and acquaintances of all three men have suggested that each one suffers from mental-health problems.
“Avera is a mentally unhealthy person who unfortunately ended up in Gaza and requires medical treatment,” Sahar Mola, who is working for Mengistu’s release, told Tazpit Press Service (TPS). “This is a humanitarian case, not a political or military one.”
Al-Sayed’s father, Sha’aban, said that his son had already attempted to run away to Gaza several times and was returned to his family with each attempt. “Hamas is well aware that my son is ill,” Sha’aban told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in April. “He ran away twice before to the Gaza Strip and they gave him back.”
A spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said that al-Sayed’s family has provided medical documentation of Hisham’s mental condition to Hamas through the Red Cross.
Ibrahim Abu-Ghanima says that his son Jumaa’s situation is similar.
“My son suffers from a complicated mental situation,” he said. “We took him to the hospital and to sheikhs because of his behavior, but unfortunately nothing helped. I don’t understand why he decided to cross the border. We never expected him to do something like that,” Ibrahim told Israel’s Channel Two News on Wednesday.
