In a photo taken shortly after their release by Hamas, five men looking weary and a little dishevelled hold up Thai flags for the camera.
After more than 15 months being held hostage, five Thai nationals – Sarusak Rumnao, Watchara Sriaoun, Sathian Suwannakham, Pongsak Thaenna, and Bannawat Saethao – were released on Thursday under the terms of a ceasefire deal between the militant group and Israel.
The handover in Gaza’s Khan Younis was chaotic as hundreds of people flocked to witness the five men, along with three Israeli hostages, leave the Gaza Strip.
But as the five Thai hostages stepped off a military helicopter and entered a hospital outside Tel Aviv, doctors and nurses cheered.
“Soon they will return to their families,” read a social media post by the Thai embassy in Israel.
Thousands of miles away in Thailand, their families wept tears of joy. “I was so happy that I could not eat anything. His father brought some food to me but I did not want to eat at all,” Surasak’s mother Khammee told The Associated Press, adding she thought that her son looked pale and puffy.
“It is confirmed, my son did not die. Thank you, God,” Watchara’s mother Sriaoun told AFP. “I will hug him when I see him. I want to see if his health is OK, I am worried about his health,” she added between sobs.
Watch moreThai hostages released by Hamas: A diplomatic success story
Doctors on Thursday said the men, all in their 20s and 30s, were in “fair” health, but had vitamin D deficiencies as they had been largely held underground and were not exposed to sunlight for extended periods of time.
During their time as hostages, they were fed “mainly pita bread and little protein dishes and vegetables”, and experienced some periods of extreme hunger, the director of Shamir Medical Center, Dr. Osnat Levtzion-Korach, told Israeli news source Haaretz. “Despite the hardships they endured, their mood is fine,” he added.
The five will now spend a few days undergoing medical tests and recuperating.
Foreign labour
Of the 31 Thai nationals taken hostage by Hamas in their October 7 attack, 23 were released in November 2023, one is still being held hostage, and two died, bringing the total death toll for Thai nationals during the Israel-Hamas conflict to 46.
All belonged to a community of around 30,000 Thai agricultural labourers working in Israel on short-term labour visas.
Many of these workers come from Thailand’s poorer regions, such as the northeast, and move to Israel for financial reasons. There, working on farms such as banana plantations they can earn around $1000 USD per month compared to less than $200 at home.
But most still earn relatively low wages by Israeli standards and often work in poor conditions, as they are unable to speak the local language.
A 2015 report from Human Rights Watch said Thai workers were often “paid salaries significantly below the legal minimum wage, forced to work long hours in excess of the legal maximum, subjected to unsafe working conditions and denied their right to change employers”.
Many also unwittingly work in danger zones. A 2020 report from Israeli labour rights organisation Kav LaOved noted that, near the Gaza Strip, Thai labourers could be “sent to work in the fields during times of conflict in the area, even when working in the fields is prohibited. They are not aware that they are not supposed to work as the Home Front Command’s local guidelines are published only in Hebrew.”
At the time of the Hamas attack, many Thai workers were living in compounds on the outskirts of southern Israeli kibbutzim and towns that were overrun by militants. Dozens were killed, despite not being Israeli targets.
“The Thai workers are innocent. They are not involved in politics, they have nothing to do with anyone’s conflict… they were just there to earn a living,” said Thailand’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Parnpree Bahiddha-Nukara.
Returning to work
In the wake of the attack, around 7,000 Thai agricultural workers were quickly repatriated, but numbers have since crept back up again. Israel is keen to welcome back its Thai workforce – which it used to replace its reliance on Palestinian labour after the 1987 Intifada – and pledged in January to open up visas for thousands more workers.
In July 2024, the Thai government also gave the green light for 309 workers to travel to Israel and work in designated safe zones, with the expectation that numbers would grow to 10,000 over the next year.
As of Thursday, there were more than 38,000 Thai workers in Israel, Thailand’s ambassador to Israel said.
Some, such as Jakkrit Noiphoothorn, also known as Thon, returned to Israel despite witnessing the October 7 attacks in person.
His employer Michael Huller, who also survived the attack, told The Times of Israel: “Thon came back because he has to make money and he still has his five-year visa. The king paid for a ticket home, so he went home to visit. And then he came back.”
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