Almost a month after a botched IDF commando operation in the Gaza Strip, more details about the mission were revealed on Wednesday.
The undercover Israeli team was detected in the town of Abassan, a difficult place to infiltrate because everyone knows everyone else and outsiders quickly attract attention. Thus, when the IDF team drove through town, suspicious Hamas security men stopped their van and questioned them.
With their covers about to be blown, the Israeli soldiers inside the vehicle opened fire, setting off a fierce battle that left eight people dead and triggered a brief but intense round of cross-border fighting between Israel and Hamas, the terrorist group ruling Gaza.
The raid largely remains clouded in mystery. The IDF has kept mum, while Hamas officials have declined to comment publicly as they investigate the incident. With each side protective of its secrets, and possibly keen to spread disinformation, the full story may never be known.
But based on interviews with eight Hamas officials conducted by AP, a picture is emerging of a carefully planned Israeli intelligence operation in which agents posing as Palestinian aid workers may have gone undetected for up to two weeks before the mission went awry.
All officials spoke on condition of anonymity, citing a Hamas gag order.
In the meantime, Hamas has tightened security in Gaza and is questioning foreign visitors such as journalists and aid workers; it has also sentenced six alleged collaborators to death.
"We take security measures after any security incident to ensure it doesn't happen again," said Iyad al-Bozum, spokesman for Hamas' Interior Ministry, which is leading the investigation.
Sending an undercover unit into Gaza would be complicated and risky. With Gaza fenced off, the border area is closely watched by Hamas. Only a handful of crossings operate.
Hamas officials believe the Israeli team was disguised as aid workers and entered Gaza through the Israeli-controlled Erez crossing, a fortress-like facility through which all civilian traffic passes.
On the Gaza side of the crossing, the team passed through two checkpoints – one controlled by the Palestinian Authority and the second controlled by Hamas – using forged IDs with the names of well-known local Palestinian families. Hamas has released a number of images of people it says were squad members. In Israel, the military censor barred publication of the photos, forcing local media to blur the images.
It remains unclear what the Israeli team did inside Gaza. One Hamas official said they posed as aid workers, pretending to move disabled people to hospitals in a van. The team had a wheelchair, along with a member disguised as a disabled woman. They visited many houses and even rented an apartment in Gaza City, he said.
There are differing accounts on how long the team operated, from several hours to two weeks. One official said it appeared to have been a reconnaissance mission to "breach the communications network of the resistance."
According to some of the accounts, the scheme began to unravel when the team made its way to Abassan. Suspicious residents alerted Hamas security, which stopped their van.
One official said the leader of the Israeli squad, known in Israel only as Lt. Col. M, spoke the local dialect fluently and remained calm.
But several things did not appear right. He said a woman was sitting between two men, even though their IDs showed them to be members of different families. Under local customs, it is frowned upon for a woman to sit alongside men who are not her relatives.
"That was the major reason for the suspicions," he said. Under further questioning, the team told Hamas that they were going to visit a woman who does not live in the area.
Hamas security officers asked them to wait while their commander, Nour Baraka, was summoned. According to various accounts, the situation deteriorated when Baraka arrived and began asking more questions. When Baraka ordered their detention for further questioning, the Israeli team opened fire and killed him. As the team fled, Hamas security men fired back, apparently killing the Israeli commander.
Another Israeli officer was badly wounded in a valiant attempt to rescue Lt. Col. M., who was reportedly shot and killed while drawing fire away from his comrades and allowing them to escape.
Hamas officials say the team was over 2 kilometers (over 1 mile) from the Israeli border, and Israeli military aircraft, including two helicopters and a warplane, carried out over 40 airstrikes to give the men cover to flee. An airstrike destroyed the Israeli van, apparently to get rid of incriminating evidence. Six more Hamas terrorists died in the fighting.
Hamas and other terrorist groups retaliated with rocket and missile fire, leading to the heaviest fighting with Israel since Operation Protective Edge in 2014. On the brink of war, the sides agreed to a cease-fire on Nov. 13.
Samuel M. Katz, author of "The Ghost Warriors," a book about Israeli undercover units during the Second Intifada, said he had no knowledge of this raid, but that it appears to have been an intelligence-gathering team, not a hit squad.
Katz said that if Israel wanted to assassinate a wanted terrorist, it has less risky alternatives like airstrikes. "One thing you can say at this point, it must have been a high-value target or a high-value mission," he said.
The IDF has said little about the raid and has refused to confirm foreign and Palestinian reports about the ethnicity of the officer who was killed. But an IDF official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it was neither the first nor the last mission behind enemy lines.
"The IDF will continue to conduct special operations wherever necessary to ensure the safety of Israeli civilians," he said.
