‘It was very difficult but I like life’

A former Israeli hostage whose wife and children were killed by Hamas during the October 7 attacks, said that he “tried to be positive” after his release earlier this year.

In a rare interview, Eli Sharabi, who became one of the highest levels of those taken when armed men stormed Israel two years ago, thought about the discovery, after his release, that his family had been killed.

He also expressed his concern that the last peace plan to put an end to the fighting between Israel and Hamas could pass and said that the life of the 20 remaining living hostages was in danger by the continuous war of Israel-Gaza.

Mr. Sharabi told his former kidnappers, Hamas, to sign the agreement for “their people … and the Middle East … The war is wrong and horrible for the two parties”.

“We must keep hope” that there will be an agreement, he added.

The 20 -point peace plan agreed by US President Donald Trump, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offers an immediate end to fighting and liberation within 72 hours of all hostages, in exchange for hundreds of Gazans and Palestinian prisoners in Israel. Hamas officials said they would reject him.

Hamas still holds the body of Mr. Sharabi Yossi’s brother, which he is desperate to go home for a burial, as well as his friend, Alon Ohel, 24, who was held with him in tunnels deeply under Gaza.

Having spent 491 days in captivity, Mr. Sharabi only discovered the day of his release in February 2025 that his wife Lianne, and his daughters, Noiya, 16 and Yahel, 13, were no longer alive – slaughtered after being taken.

When they weren’t there to greet him when he returned to Israel, he broke down by realizing that “the worst scenario occurred”.

About 1,200 people in Israel were killed on October 7 when armed men from Hamas storm the border, while 251 others were taken hostage.

As the second anniversary approaches, Mr. Sharabi told BBC News to his test and what motivates him to rebuild his life.

In the center of Israel while the sun sets, Mr. Sharabi, 53, is held on the Calm Mediterranean Sea. As he breathes in the air of the sea, such freedom felt distant earlier this year while he put famine, abuse and violence.

On this morning of October 7, the Sharabi family hid for hours in its security room in Kibbutz Be’éri, an Israeli community of around 1,000 people near the Gaza border. Almost one in 10 people in Kibbutz Be’eri was killed or taken hostage that day.

While the armed men of Hamas burst out and the gunshots resounded, he and Lianne, born in Bristol, England, threw themselves on their daughters.

He said they told armed men that Lianne, Noiya and Yahel had British passports, but they dragged her out of his house.

“I understood that this is the moment when I was probably kidnapped. So I just turned my head to my daughters and I shouted” I will be back “- and it was the last time I saw them.”

Mr. Sharabi, the former commercial director of Kibbutz, described how he had been taken for the first time in a mosque in Gaza where he was attacked by Palestinian civilians.

“My eyes were blindfolded, but I could hear men and children and they started to lynch with bare hands, and children’s shoes start to hit me when I was on the ground.”

For almost his 16 months in captivity, he said he was attached – first with cords with wrists and ankles, then with iron chains. The pain made him vanish.

But he said he was determined to survive, even when he had trouble breathing for a month after saying that his kidnappers had beaten and broke his ribs.

“It’s frightening. It’s humiliating when freedom is removed from you,” he recalls.

“You have to ask for permission to breathe, speak, go to the toilet. You have to go for food, water, everything. But I promised my daughters that I would come back to them, and they love life.

“So I said, I don’t care what will happen. I will be back to my family with hands or not hands, with legs or no legs. I really thought, really from the first moment when I will survive this.”

Mr. Sharabi says that he was taken to the Hamas tunnel network, where he describes months of passes with three other hostages in small and inhuman conditions with little sanitation or food.

During the last six months, he said that they have received only one meal per day which would often be only one piece of Pita bread. “Famine was the worst thing … You eat the crumbs on the carpet,” he said.

After losing more than four stones (25 kg), there was a world shock from the images of his weak and emaciated state when he was finally released.

His kidnappers told him a week of imminent release a week before it happened. He was also told that his brother had been hostage and died in Gaza, probably in an Israeli attack. As this freedom approaches, he dreamed that he would move with Lianne, Noiya and Yahel, in England, near the relatives of his wife.

When the Liberation Day came, Hamas paraded it on stage during a television ceremony, surrounded by dozens of armed mans. He says he was made said during this ceremony how he was looking forward to seeing his family – but those who look at something he had not.

The joy of liberating quickly gave way to devastating reality when he was welcomed to Israel.

“The social worker approached me and said,” Your mother and your sister are waiting for you “. I told him” please bring me Lianne and my daughters. “And she said that” your mother and sister will tell you “.

“I cried for a few minutes, and I said to myself:” I can cry all day, but that won’t help me bring Lianne, Noiya and Yahel. And I need my family with me “. So I said to the social worker” Go, let’s go and let’s kiss my mother and sister. “”

The old-fashioned composure slips when he remembers the first telephone call he made as a free man to his wife’s parents in Wales, to share his sorrow. It was a “very emotional” but “important” call. The funeral of his family took place in Israel when he was still in captivity of Hamas without knowing their fate.

Mr. Sharabi showed remarkable resilience in the months that followed. He campaigned around the world for hostages – even by meeting President Trump in the Oval Office. “I ask him to finish work and help all the others come back too,” he argues.

He believes that Trump played a decisive role in helping to obtain his release in a hostage agreement in February, echoing the vocal pressure of the American president in recent months on Israel and Hamas to find peace.

Questioned by the BBC if he feared that the new peace plan would occur, Mr. Sharabi, speaking on Wednesday, replied: “Of course – very worried. There are probably two days, we were sure that it is very close, but it doesn’t seem so close, unfortunately. Maybe I don’t know a few things, but I will be delighted to be surprised.”

He said that the proposal was “very good news” and that people should “not lose our faith that one day there will be an agreement”.

He says he knows too well what horrors the hostages still live when Hamas refuses to release them and Israel has expanded his military campaign. Until now, more than 66,000 people have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza, according to the Ministry of Health in the territory.

“Everyone knows when the war continues that it risks the life of hostages. It is not a secret. For me, when I want the 48 hostages to come back today, tomorrow, I just want it to stop … War is horrible, people suffer from war, but we cannot forget who started it, and who is the bad and who is the good guy.”

He wrote a book entitled Organing to ensure that people are aware of his ordeal. Lianne, a passionate reading, told him that he had not read enough – so he thinks she would be proud.

Although it is difficult to continue without his family, he says that he does not need commemorative days to remember it.

“Yossi, Lianne, Noiya and Yahel are with me every day in my life, every moment. But I’m sure they will be alongside my life, not instead of my life.

“I don’t have the privilege of staying in bed and crying all day after my family and friends fought for me for 500 days. It’s unacceptable for me to do it.”

In Israel, foreigners approach and tell him that he is a hero. His hostage time has strengthened his determination to live despite the loss of his family.

“It was very difficult, but I really like, really life … I try to be positive. I work on it.”

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