The resident of Gaza, who with his vascular surgeon wife and journalist son, “stored” three hostages kidnapped from Israel in his family home, who were rescued by the IDF in a particularly complicated and bloody operation, was known in the area as a kind, cheerful and popular doctor.
A popular, smiling person
Doctor Ahmad Al-Jamal was also an imam ( pictured ), who provided not only physical but also spiritual support to the residents of the Nusseirat refugee camp. Menye also lived with the family, who kept the hostages in a dark room on the upper floor of the house.
The prisoners said that in the evenings they could hear the family conversation and the noise of the children.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the family belonged to a prominent stratum of Gazan society, lived well and enjoyed public respect . The doctor’s brother, Abdelrahman, was Hamas’s senior legal adviser in Gaza, who also acted as a spokesman during the October terrorist attack, and enthusiastically welcomed the action.
According to his usual habit, the doctor left home to do his work every morning and returned home to his son, daughter-in-law, grandchildren – and the prisoners in the evening. The latter were Almog Meir Jan, Andrej Kozlov and Shlomi Ziv.
Hamas took care of guarding the prisoners and preventing them from escaping, who stationed around thirty armed men in the house, where only the daughter-in-law and the children were home during the day.
The wife also worked daily at the clinic, where she supervised voluntary blood donation and performed minor interventions on the wounded. The doctor’s son, Abdullah, mostly worked in external locations, from where he reported for the Palestine Chronicle news site.
The secret captivity was not entirely secret
Among the interviewed local residents, the doctor’s commitment to Hamas was well known, and many also knew about the presence of the hostages, because in a closed community such as a refugee camp, such a secret cannot be completely isolated for a long time.
Several local speakers complain that Hamas introduces sources of danger into their lives by keeping hostages in densely populated neighborhoods. According to one of the Gazans, the population should be informed about the risks with maps or in some other way, but apparently Hamas does not do this because it would help locate the hostages, which is Israel’s biggest headache.
The organizers of the rescue operation had to reckon with the fact that their agents would operate in an extremely suspicious and detail-oriented environment. Therefore, disguised as internal migrant families, they rented two apartments in the area and even paid attention to such details that their rickety cars were loaded with the usual items of use for refugees, such as mattresses, dishes, blankets and full suitcases.
The preparation staff also took care of the agents’ make-up, so that their “Arab look” was as perfect as possible. Suits and well-worn sports shoes were bought at nearby flea markets.
Neither the IDF nor the security organization Sin Beth said how many of the field agents were Jewish and how many were Arab, but according to terrorism experts, some of them must have been local agents, due to the appropriate camouflage, local knowledge and language protection. Because of Hamas’s highly developed security and intelligence system, even the slightest mistake could be fatal.
It is also certain that by talking to the residents of the refugee camp, they obtained or bought information from them in order to precisely locate the location, which they succeeded in doing because they did not miss the target.
It should be noted here that in the past Israel has carried out airstrikes against terrorist headquarters, but this has resulted in excessive civilian casualties. Due to the increasing international pressure, they are recently forced into softer, but at the same time riskier businesses.
Such situations are especially acute and complicated when hostages must be rescued in combat conditions, ensuring their survival. The operation was made even more complicated by the fact that another target had to be attacked at the same time, where a young Israeli woman was being held captive, also in a private apartment. The two raids had to be coordinated in terms of time and logistics.
Why was it necessary to ask for military support?
According to local reports cited by the WSJ, Aljamal, his son and daughter-in-law were killed in the action, but the children survived.
While the rescue of the young woman in the other house took place in 6 minutes, the situation in the marketplace went wild, and the hostages and the commandos both fell into a deadly trap. Therefore, they had to ask for military support, which was only included in the preliminary plans as a last resort.
To the surprise of the hostage rescuers, they came under heavy crossfire from the 30 Hamas soldiers guarding the apartment and the militants patrolling outside the house. They tried to repulse the commandos not only with handguns, but also with assault rifles and RPG grenades. The Israelis also came under fire from the houses and sniper nests surrounding the market square. An Israeli staff sergeant was killed in the hail of bullets.
The firefight lasted for about 45 minutes, and the Israelis began to run out of ammunition. Meanwhile, dozens of Hamas militants began to emerge from the surrounding tunnels, which required a massive reaction from Israeli reinforcements, tanks and the air force. Unfortunately, the unpredictable development also resulted in civilian casualties.
Military intervention was urgently needed, also because two reactive grenades hit two of the rescue vehicles. There was a danger that no Israeli would make it out of the square alive.
The IDF did not directly comment on the killing of the family members or the destruction of the buildings, but said in a statement that they acted to “eliminate terrorists” and “destroy terrorist infrastructure.”
The Palestinian media covered the event in abundance, but they omit from their reports that the deceased were holding hostages in their houses, instead presenting them as the victims of a baseless and vicious attack. A case from February, when a man with the same name lost his young son in Rafah, is being reposted en masse and is being framed as the current event.
In terms of its complexity and danger, the Nusseirat hostage rescue is comparable to the famous Entebbe operation
Now, according to his reflexive custom, one of the UN officials expresses the suspicion that the hostage rescue might not have complied with the rules of international warfare on behalf of the world organization as a whole. He does not mention the illegality of hostage-taking, but talks about the ‘shock effect’ caused by the rescue.
It should be mentioned here that the international convention against hostage-taking was already adopted in 1979 by UN General Assembly Resolution 34/146. resolution, which was voted by 174 states. The rule basically stipulates the unconditional release of unlawfully detained (kidnapped) persons, and does not provide for the way of rescuing hostages, nor does it classify it as an act of war.
Earlier, in 1976, a similar hostage rescue operation, one of the most complicated and risky in history, took place at Entebbe airport in Uganda, when Israeli commandos landed in the heart of Africa and rescued more than a hundred international hostages who had been kidnapped by Arab and German terrorists.
The complex operation lasted 51 minutes. One of the commanders of the raid was Jonathan Netanyahu, the brother of the current prime minister, who did not return home alive from the rescue operation because he was shot by a Ugandan soldier.
In relation to the rescue operation, the leadership of the UN exposed itself even then. General Secretary Kurt Waldheim (a former officer of the Nazi Wehrmacht) did not celebrate the release of the hostages, but condemned the operation, saying that it “violated the sovereignty of a sovereign state”.
Waldheim was not convicted of war crimes, and he may even have been the Federal Chancellor of Austria later, but according to historical research, he had detailed knowledge of the killing orders and deportations taking place in his area of operations, and facilitated the execution of many others by passing “enemy situation reports” to the SS.
Newsessentials Blog 
Posted on June 19, 2024
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