Revealed: Ex-Palestinian soccer star’s role in holding Israeli hostage Gilad Shalit

A former soccer player for the Palestinian Authority’s national team, Mahmoud Sarsak, was one of the terrorists who held the former Israeli hostage Gilad Shalit imprisoned in Gaza, i24NEWS reported on Monday. Sarsak hails from Rafah, in southern Gaza.

In 2009, Israeli security forces arrested Sarsak as he was heading for a training session. 

Sarsak was then held in administrative detention for some three years. Israel's domestic intelligence agency, Shin Bet, refrained from specifying the reason he was arrested.

However, Israeli intelligence has since revealed that Sarsak was "active in the [Palestinian] Islamic Jihad organization," a radical Iranian-backed Islamist terrorist organization and an ally of Hamas. During interrogations, Sarsak admitted that he had held Shalit captive for a period of time after the IDF soldier was kidnapped in 2006.

Sarsak also admitted that he attempted to carry out terrorist attacks against Israel. However, Shin Bet was reportedly unable to file an indictment against him due to insufficient concrete evidence. 

Following a hunger strike by Sarsak and international pressure on Jerusalem, Israel agreed to release him on condition that he promised to emigrate to Ireland, a country that has emerged as one of Israel’s strongest critics in the European Union. 

Terrorists in Gaza held Shalit captive for five years. In 2011, Shalit was released in a controversial internationally brokered deal where Israel reluctantly released over 1,000 convicted terrorists, including Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the future Oct. 7, 2023, massacre. Sinwar was killed in a firefight with Israeli forces in Gaza in October 2024.

In 2012, the top Spanish soccer club, Barcelona FC, reportedly invited Shalit as a guest to attend a game against its rival Real Madrid. Following protests from Hamas and anti-Israel organizations, Barcelona eventually also decided to invite a Palestinian prisoner recently released from an Israeli prison, Mahmoud Sarsak.

However, Hamas pressured Sarsak to reject the invitation from the Spanish soccer club. Denying his background as a terrorist, Sarsak officially claimed at the time that Shalit’s "slogan is the gun, whereas mine is soccer, whose message is love and peace." He added, "For this reason, I will refuse."

The efforts to secure the release of Shalit from captivity became an important issue in Israeli society throughout his imprisonment in Gaza. 

In June 2021, Hamas released new footage of what the terrorist organization claimed to be the former hostage Shalit. The video clip was accompanied by the voice of what Hamas claimed to be the voice of a second Israeli “captured soldier.” 

In the audio recording, which was released by the pro-Hamas Qatari news outlet Al Jazeera, an unidentified person who claims to be an IDF soldier, can be heard saying in heavily accented Hebrew that he was “in captivity of [Izz a-Din] al-Qassam Brigades,” the name for the military wing of the terrorist organization Hamas.

However, at the time there were no known living Israeli soldiers held as hostages by Hamas. “I hope the State of Israel still exists... I hope I will soon be in the arms of my family,” the supposed IDF soldier can be heard saying. 

Yaron Blum, the Israeli government’s chief negotiator for the release of hostages, dismissed the video and audio message as cheap Hamas propaganda. 

“Hamas is in distress after the severe blows it suffered in Operation Guardian of the Walls and is using cheap and transparent manipulation,” Blum said.