A family in Thailand awaits word on hostages in Gaza

Nov. 24, 2023 Updated 3:48 PM PT

BAN HAET, Thailand — For 35-year-old Nutthawaree Munkan, Israel was supposed to be the coda of a long journey to pay off her debts — and to allow her family to truly begin living.

Putting her young son and daughter in their grandmother’s care, Nutthawaree, a single mother, first left her home in northeastern Thailand more than a decade ago to work in Australia. She eventually landed at a fruit packing factory in Israel, less than two miles from the Gaza border.

On Oct. 7, with a little more than a year left in her five-year, three-month contract, Hamas militants attacked southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and kidnapping about 240. Nutthawaree was one of 26 Thai nationals — and the only Thai woman — taken hostage.

“We’ve never been together as a family and we were looking forward to that,” said her mother, 56-year-old Boonyarin Srichan.

After her daughter’s abduction, Thai government officials visited Boonyarin at the family’s rice farm in northeastern Thailand to take a sample of her DNA to match against the 34 Thai nationals who had been killed in the attack. They offered words of comfort before they left.

But in the weeks since, anxiety has filled the family’s home, a modest one-story house encircled by a blue concrete wall and mango and papaya trees.

Israel and Hamas are carrying out a deal to trade 50 Israeli hostages for 150 Palestinian prisoners in Israel and a four-day cease-fire. This has also opened a long-awaited window for the Thais to be freed.

A separate deal brokered by Iran has been expected to see Hamas release the Thai hostages, according to Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, an Arab news outlet based in London.

On Friday, 12 of these hostages were freed, Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin wrote on the social media platform X. Israeli officials said that figure was 10.

It would be several hours before Boonyarin learned whether her daughter was one of them.

“I’ve been waiting for a call from someone in the government all day, but so far, I haven’t heard anything,” Boonyarin said. “What if it doesn’t happen?”

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The family’s story was common to rural northeastern Thailand, one of the poorest parts of the country. The majority of people here work in agriculture, making as little as $283 a month, a sum that makes it impossible to save for the future, tide them over during poor harvests or invest in their farms.

“Because they don’t have a stable income, many poor farmers go to loan sharks rather than a bank to borrow money,” said Charlie Loisoong, a labor activist. “It’s very common in Thailand for children to be responsible for their parents’ debt.

“And because they know it’s much more dangerous not to pay back a loan shark than a bank, children feel like they have to protect their family.”

Many turn to migrant work, aware that paying off these debts would require a lifetime of work on local wages. In addition to wages that are six or seven times those on Thai farms, Israel is an attractive destination because it needs agricultural workers.

“Education levels in northeastern Thailand are low, especially in Isan,” Loisoong said. “But they already have the farming skills necessary to do the same kind of work in Israel.”

For Israel, in turn, Thai workers are a way to avoid using Palestinian workers, who, until the 1987 intifada — or uprising against Israeli occupation — were the country’s primary agricultural labor force. There were around 30,000 Thai workers in Israel on Oct. 7, with as many as 6,000 living close to Gaza.

Israel and Thailand operate a job placement scheme that uses government channels rather than private recruiters. Finding work in Israel nonetheless costs workers $2,000 or more in flight expenses and other processing fees, for which many must take out additional loans.

For 28-year-old Ubon Namsane, who was evacuated after the Hamas attack, the $3,000 loan he took out to find work in Israel 11 months ago has been worth it.

Trying to pay off the $17,000 his family owed with his $560 monthly wage as a car mechanic had felt futile. In Israel, he earned $1,700 a month growing pineapples and pomegranates, with additional income he made from side jobs fixing cars on the weekends.

“I was in a very difficult spot before,” Ubon said. “But ever since I started working in Israel for almost a year, I managed to pay off most of my debt. Now I only have a bit more than $2,800 to pay off the car loan, then I’m done.”

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The risks of her daughter’s job had always weighed on Boonyarin.

The two would talk on the phone every day, mostly so that Nutthawaree could stay abreast of milestones such as her daughter’s first day of kindergarten.

The children, now 8 and 12, saw the news of their mother’s abduction on TikTok, but the gravity of the situation seems to have escaped them.

“They are kids; they don’t have much emotion about it,” Boonyarin said. “My daughter left when her youngest was just 2, so they don’t have that kind of relationship.”

But every now and then, Nutthawaree would cut these calls short, saying that she had to run to the bomb shelter.

“It didn’t look safe enough to me, but my daughter promised that after the Israel contract ended she would come home and settle down,” Boonyarin said. “I only prayed and hoped that it would be over and she would be back soon.”

Farm work near the Gaza Strip is perilous, with fewer bomb shelters than the kibbutzim or moshavim where most of Israel’s border population resides.

And Israel’s missile defense system, known as the Iron Dome, only protects the country’s densely populated urban centers, leaving farmland and those who work there exposed.

“There are no protective shelters in the fields. It’s a wide open area,” said Tal Nachum, who owns a cherry tomato farm three miles from the Gaza border. “The time between the firing of the rocket to when it hits is 15 seconds, given how close we are to the fence. It’s not even enough time for people to find shelter.”

But both women knew that there were few alternatives. Boonyarin herself had been a single mother, leaving Nutthawaree to be the “family pillar.”

“She was willing to take the risk to give us a better life,” Boonyarin said.

The money that Nutthawaree had sent back from Australia had been the only reason they could afford the down payment on their house.

By the end of her contract in Israel, they would have been able to finally pay off the $8,200 left on the mortgage and make inroads on the payments on their truck.

She had found happiness in Israel, too, having met a fellow Thai worker named Boonthom Phankhong during her first year there.

Like Nutthawaree, Boonthom, who is 45, was the breadwinner in a family of poor rice farmers, sending back $850 a month to chip away at his family’s debt and care for his ailing mother.

“Their plan was to finish out their contracts and come back to Thailand to get married,” said Urai Phankhong, Boonthom’s sister.

But Boonthom, who worked at a potato farm just outside of Gaza’s southern border, was also taken hostage on Oct. 7.

A friend of Boonthom later recalled that the couple had left the camp on motorcycle to go to a side job. They had probably been captured together.

“We were aware of the danger, but once Boonthom got there he said he felt safe enough — that there was nothing to worry about,” Urai said. “But now our perspective has changed completely.”

She is especially concerned about the Israeli military’s airstrikes on Gaza, which Hamas says has killed several hostages.

“It worries me that a bomb is going to land where they are being held,” Urai said.

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In the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks, around 9,000 Thai workers — most of them from the Gaza area — were evacuated to Thailand, despite financial incentives to continue working.

Nachum, the Israeli cherry tomato farmer, said that he offered his 94 Thai workers a 25% raise to stay, on top of the 25% the government has reportedly offered. Only 17 accepted, with the rest returning to Thailand.

His workers had acclimated to the occasional rocket flying overhead, but the breaching of the gates was a different story. Those working in the fields on
Oct. 7 had called him in a panic, saying that 10 or so militants had entered the farm and were firing at them.

For Nachum, whose two cousins were also killed in the attacks, the sudden departure of his Thai workers has been as devastating as the rockets, which have wiped out around 8 hectares of his crops. Without enough workers to harvest the tomatoes that survived, he said that he is anticipating up to $5 million in losses. He wonders whether it is even worth it to plant for next year’s harvest.

“There is a big question mark as to whether I will have sufficient labor to maintain the crops,” he said. “Planting the crops without the labor is just sinking money down the drain with no end.”

But those who have evacuated to Thailand say that the same circumstances that sent them looking for work in Israel will eventually send them back.

Boonsong Donchan, who worked on an avocado farm in central Israel, said he had resisted pleas from his wife and mother to return to Thailand because he hadn’t even been able to pay off the $2,800 loan he took out to go to Israel in May. He relented and boarded the government plane only after his boss, who was hemorrhaging profits after one of his farms near Gaza suffered heavy damage in the attack, stopped paying him.

“My wife said ‘no more’ after I got back,” Boonsong said. “We just had a young son, and my wife said she doesn’t want him to be fatherless.”

A ransacked bedroom with blood on the floor.

But weighed down by the “many hundred thousand bahts’ worth of debt” from both his wife’s family and his, he sees no other way out.

To cushion the sudden loss of income, the Thai government has been offering evacuated workers like him financial assistance, and Boonsong took an overnight bus from his home in northern Thailand to the labor ministry in Bangkok to apply for a payout.

“I don’t know how long it will take,” he said with a slight frown.

He had hoped that he would be able to walk away with the $425 in cash, but was told to leave his bank account information instead.

“I tried many things in the past, like working in a factory. None of them worked, nothing paid nearly as much as the $1,400 I made each month in Israel,” he said. “I would go back in a heartbeat. I have too much debt to stop working.”

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In northeastern Thailand, Boonyarin is grappling with her own farming woes. Unlike in central Thailand, where rice farmers can manage up to three harvests a year, droughts in the northeastern region have limited her farm to two.

The sudden interruption in her daughter’s monthly $710 remittances has upset their financial balancing act. To cover the house and car payments, she has had to take out another loan. “I don’t care about that,” she said.

“We will figure it out.”

Her in-laws-to-be are no better off.

“I don’t know what to do, but I already borrowed some more money to make the immediate payments,” Urai said.

“Even though I work, I don’t make anywhere near what Boonthom makes. Nobody else can spare money for our mother.”

Late Friday, the names of the Thai hostages who were released started appearing in the Israeli press. Among them was Nutthawaree.

The family is planning to throw a party when she gets home. Her daughter already has a welcome-back gift in mind: a new pair of shoes.

A row of coffins ceremonially displayed at an airport in Bangkok

Kanyarat Suriyasri shows a picture of her husband, Owat Suriyasri, a Thai worker being held hostage in Gaza. (Amaury Paul / AFP/Getty Images)

A woman holds a phone with a man's picture

Wongduien Lumlert, 42, shows a picture of her relative Anan Phetkaew, 39, a Thai worker who was killed in Israel. (Chaiwat Subprasom / LightRocket/Getty Images)

“I couldn’t sleep last night due to excitement,” Boonyarin said.

But with their carefully planned timeline for the future and debt repayment plans thrown into jeopardy, she cannot help but worry that this reunion will be short-lived.

“I really don’t want her to go back to working overseas, at least for a little while,” she said. “But with the debt we are in, I really don’t know how else we are going to get through it otherwise.”

Her daughter’s single-minded focus on providing for her family will be difficult to talk down, and Boonyarin knows that this might mean their plans of finally settling down as a family may have to wait a little longer.

“But I will not allow my daughter to go back to Israel again,” she said.

Kim reported from Ban Haet and Yam from Tel Aviv. Special correspondent Chaiyot Yongcharoenchai in Ban Haet contributed to this report.