Yaakov Lappin
JNS, June 9, 2024
“The scale of the rehearsals was as large as the [1976] Entebbe operation—[in terms of] the models we used, as well as the way in which we trained, and we had to make sure that everything was done simultaneously,” he said.
Saturday’s hostage rescue operation in central Gaza could not have gone ahead without the Israel Defense Force’s ongoing wider ground maneuver in the Strip, which is improving Israeli intelligence and operational control of the area.
As IDF Spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said on Saturday, “if we didn’t operate in Gaza we could have not conducted this sort of operation.”
The operation was green-lit by Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, with the approval and oversight of IDF Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, the head of the IDF’s Intelligence Directorate Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva and Maj. Gen. (Res.) Nitsan Alon, who heads the special headquarters tasked with gathering intelligence on kidnapped Israelis and MIAs.
The commanders gathered in the Israel Security Agency’s joint operations headquarters, receiving real-time intelligence on multiple screens to help coordinate the operation, which had to be as precise and well-timed as brain surgery.
The mission, conducted in the heart of the Nuseirat neighborhood, involved units from the Israel Defense Forces, with hundreds of troops providing the outer ring of security, the ISA and the Israel Police’s elite National Counter-Terrorism Unit (Yamam).
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