In rare move, Israel identifies special operations officer killed in Gaza Strip raid
May 17, 2022 1 Comment
IN A RARE MOVE, Israel released the identity last weekend of a special operations officer who was killed by Islamic Hamas during a 2018 covert mission in the Gaza Strip. As intelNews reported at the time, an undercover team of Israeli operatives was exfiltrated by helicopter from Gaza on November 11, 2018. The exfiltration took place after the Israelis were spotted by members of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, which is part of Hamas’ armed wing.
The incident was followed by a barrage of nearly 500 rockets and mortars fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel. The Israelis responded by firing more than 160 missiles that fell throughout the Palestinian enclave. Hostilities were halted on November 13, when Hamas declared a unilateral ceasefire brokered by Egypt. The incident prompted the resignation of Israel’s Defense Minister, Avigdor Liberman. At the time, the Israel Defense Forces, which were behind the botched operation, refused to comment on the team’s mission, admitting only that its troops “operated […] in the Gaza Strip”.
It was said at the time that the members of the undercover team were dressed in civilian clothes and that at least two of them were disguised as women. After entering Gaza in a civilian Volkswagen vehicle, they drove to Khan Yunis, a city in the south of the Strip, near the Egyptian border. It was there that they were discovered by the al-Qassam Brigades, who stopped them at a checkpoint, asking for identification. The Israeli team opened fire using a silenced gun. Following a high-speed car chase, the Israelis left via helicopter. Their abandoned Volkswagen car was then blown up by an Israeli fighter jet.
On Sunday, the IDF declassified the name of the fallen officer. It also released a photograph of the man, who has been identified as Lt. Col. Mahmoud Kheir el-Din, 41, from Galilee. A member of Israel’s Druze community, el-Din served in the Mista’arvim, a counter-terrorism unit of the IDF’s Special Operations division that is trained to capture or assassinate targets in enemy territory. El-Din joined the IDF’s Special Operations division in 2002, after having served as a platoon commander.
The IDF also provided limited details about the botched operation that led to el-Din’s death. It claims that el-Din “physically confronted” one of the Hamas operatives, thus giving another one of the Israeli soldiers the opportunity to open fire and kill seven Hamas members. El-Din was killed during the shootout, according to the IDF. The Israeli government said the decision to release el-Din’s identity was coordinated with his family. It added, however, that it does not plan to release further details about the botched operation.
► Author: Ian Alen | Date: 17 May 2022 | Permalink
Militants in the Gaza Strip have accused Israel of assassinating a Palestinian engineer based in Malaysia, who was shot dead on Saturday by unknown assailants riding motorcycles. The victim has been identified as Dr. Fadi M. al-Batsh, 35, from the town of Jabalia in the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian enclave controlled by the militant group Hamas. Al-Batsh is believed to have completed undergraduate and Master’s degrees in electrical engineering at the Islamic University of Gaza. In 2011 he enrolled as a PhD student at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, from where he subsequently received his doctorate in electrical engineering. He was then employed as a lecturer by the University of Kuala Lumpur’s British Malaysian Institute. The Institute is located in the Jalan Gombak neighborhood of the Malaysian capital, where al-Batsh lived with his wife and three children. Some reports from Israel said that al-Batsh worked on drone technology and that he had authored scientific articles on the development of drone technology, as well as on the technical specifications of transmitters used to remotely control drones.
An employee of France’s consulate in Jerusalem is under arrest for allegedly smuggling weapons from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank, according to French media reports, which have been confirmed by Israel. The consular employee has been identified by the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security agency, as Romain Franck, 23. He reportedly worked as a driver at the consulate, a job he managed to secure through a prestigious “international volunteer” program sponsored by the French government. The elite program allows recent French college graduates to gain work experience in various countries around the world. Although he had a relatively junior post at the French consulate, Franck carried a diplomatic passport, which allowed him to move through international borders without being searched, due to his diplomatic immunity privileges.
The sophistication behind the killing of a senior Hamas official, who was assassinated in his home in the Gaza Strip on Friday evening, points almost certainly to Israel, according to observers. Mazen Faqha, 38, helped plan several lethal operations by the Palestinian militant group, including a 2002 suicide bombing that killed nine and wounded over 50. Following an extensive manhunt, Israeli authorities arrested Faqha in the West Bank and in 2003 convicted him to nine life sentences. But in 2011, Faqha was among 1,027 Palestinian and Arab-Israeli prisoners that Israel released in exchange for Gilad Shalit, a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces, who was held prisoner by Hamas. Since that time, Faqha had lived in the Gaza Strip, the Hamas-controlled Palestinian enclave that has been under strict Israeli blockade since 2006.
The Israel Defense Forces told a press conference on Wednesday that hackers belonging to the Palestinian militant group Hamas lured Israeli soldiers by posing as young women online. Wednesday’s press conference was led by an IDF spokesman who requested to remain anonymous, as is often the case with the Israeli military. He told reporters that the hackers used carefully crafted online profiles of real Israeli women, whose personal details and photographs were expropriated from their publicly available social media profiles. The hackers then made contact with members of the IDF and struck conversations with them that in many cases became intimate over time. At various times in the process, the hackers would send the Israeli soldiers photographs of the women, which were copied from the women’s online public profiles.
A senior member of the military wing of Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that governs the Gaza Strip, is believed to have defected to Israel. News of the rumored defection first appeared on the website of Al-Hayat al-Jadida, the official newspaper of the Palestinian Authority, which is based in the West Bank. On Tuesday, Al-Hayat said that the man, a member of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing, had not been seen for several days.
Authorities in Israel said on Sunday that they foiled a plan to smuggle dozens of spy drones from Israel into the Gaza Strip. The Israeli Ministry of Defense said in a statement late on Sunday that the drones had been detected by members of the Shin Bet, Israel’s security police. The incident reportedly took place at Kerem Shalom, a major border crossing in to Gaza, a Palestinian enclave that is controlled by Hamas. The Defense Ministry statement also said that Sunday’s incident was only the latest in a string of recent attempts to smuggle spy drones into Gaza, all of which had been stopped by the Shin Bet since January.
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