Gaza cease-fire agreement offers hope for return of hostage son to Nepal

In a remote village in western Nepal, thousands of miles from Israel, Mahananda Joshi sat restlessly at home on Thursday, phone in hand.

Now the phone is not far from his hands. And never be silent. He is waiting for news about his son Bipin Joshi, a 23-year-old Nepalese agriculture student who was kidnapped by Hamas and taken to Gaza.

Every time the phone rings, Mahananda, a local school teacher, thinks it might bring news about Bipin or even – his best hope – his son’s voice on the line.

“Unfortunately, it’s always someone else,” Mahananda said.

Bipin was one of dozens of foreign workers abducted along with Israelis during a Hamas attack on October 7, 2023.

Twenty-four were subsequently released – 23 from Thailand and one from the Philippines – but Bipin and nine others remained.

It was never clear why.

Bipin’s mother Padma last spoke to him on October 6, she said, a day before he was abducted.

He assured her that he had eaten well and showed her the clothes he was wearing.

The next time the family saw him was a video taken from Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza, which was shown to them by Israeli officials who asked them to identify him.

This was confirmation that he was taken alive.

The BBC now understands that Bipin is believed to still be alive, but Nepal’s ambassador to Israel, Dhan Prasad Pandit, said he still had “no concrete information” about Bipin’s condition or whereabouts.

Mahananda, Bipin’s mother Padma and 18-year-old sister Puspa live in a small white one-story house in the village of Bispuri Mahendranagar, near the border with India.

As of Thursday, they had heard nothing from officials, they said, only headlines announcing a cease-fire agreement.

This news gave them all new hope.

“I feel that today or tomorrow he will inform me mom I am free and will come home immediately” said Padma.

But relief for Joshi’s family, if it comes, will not be so quick.

Along with nine other foreign workers who remain hostages, Bipin will not be released in the first phase cease fire whose priority will be the release of elderly men, women and children.

The fear for the family is that while they wait, things could change.

“Everything can fall apart,” Padma said with tears in her eyes.

The family’s struggle began on the day of the attack.

Bipin was one of several Nepali students at a kibbutz in southern Israel that day, and Mahanand, a local school teacher, got a call from one of them to say that Bipin had been kidnapped.

At the time, Mahananda knew nothing about the Hamas attack or the situation unfolding in Israel, and it was difficult for him to understand what he was hearing.

He later learns that 10 Nepalese students have been killed in the attack, and that one – his son – appears to have been taken hostage.

This feeling of separation persisted for 15 agonizing months, Mahananda and Padma said on Thursday.

The pain of each hostage family was great, but for some of those far from Israel, there was an added sense of isolation.

“It was a very lonely experience,” Mahananda said.

Mr Pandit, Nepal’s ambassador to Israel, told the BBC he was in regular contact with the family and visited the village.

Mahananda painted a slightly different picture, saying that at the beginning of the war the family did receive frequent visits from officials, but as it dragged on, they were increasingly left alone.

“Since the conclusion of the new ceasefire agreement, no one has come to us or communicated with us,” he said.

“Everything we know comes from the news.”

A spokesman for Israel’s presidential office, Isaac Herzog, who has been working with the families of the hostages for the past 15 months, said it treats all hostages equally, both Israeli and foreign, and is working diligently to free them all. . .

For some families, news of the ceasefire offers hope that their 15-month ordeal is coming to an end and they will see their loved ones again in a matter of weeks.

For others, like Joshi, any hope must be tempered.

The longer they have to wait, the more likely it is that the ceasefire agreement could collapse.

At home in Bispura Mahendranagar on Thursday, Bipin’s sister Puspa held a photograph of her brother as she spoke.

Tears filled her eyes as she spoke of his homecoming. She was sure he would.

“And when I see him again, I’m going to hug him,” she said. – And cry.