Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ) said on Tuesday that Edan Alexander, the Tenafly, N.J., native who has been held hostage by Hamas since Oct. 7, has not yet been released because he is “tied in with phase two” of the cease-fire deal. 

Kim was part of a bipartisan group of senators who traveled to Israel after attending the Munich Security Conference to meet with Israeli leaders, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar. The New Jersey senator wrote on X on Monday that he was in Jerusalem “to ensure we use every diplomatic tool available to get New Jersey’s Edan Alexander, and all remaining hostages, home safely.”

Speaking to Jewish Insider at the Capitol shortly after landing back in Washington, Kim said that he “did not get any update” on Alexander’s status in hostage-release negotiations. 

“I met with Edan’s mother, and then I raised his name in every single one of the meetings. The challenge there is that he’s kind of tied in with phase two. I did not get a sense of where those negotiations stand,” Kim said. “When we met with Netanyahu, he said that he was going to be meeting with his counsel about what to do about phase two.”

“I tried to press and say, ‘Look, you’ve got to keep this diplomatic process going forward,’” he continued. “I really think that this has to be the moment. If we lose it, I think it’ll just be all the more difficult.”

The second phase of the cease-fire deal includes Hamas freeing the rest of the hostages, who are all young men. Phase one, which is currently underway, includes women, children, men over 50 and others described as “humanitarian cases.” 
The Tenafly native, who turned 21 while in captivity in December, was on IDF patrol at Kibbutz Nirim when he was kidnapped into Gaza by Hamas terrorists. Hamas published an undated video of Alexander on Nov. 30, 2024, which was the first and only proof of life of the Israeli-American hostage in his 500 days of captivity.