BICOM

The Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar has published details of the Israeli special forces operation in Gaza earlier this month.

According to the report, based on a Hamas investigation, the Israeli unit entered Gaza through the Erez border crossing using false identity cards in order to plant surveillance equipment to monitor Hamas’s internal communications. The surveillance equipment was transferred through the Kerem Shalom border crossing by a Palestinian man, who subsequently took it to a secret underground communications facility used by the military wings of Palestinian groups in Gaza.

The Palestinian man provided the Israeli unit with two vehicles. During the rescue operation one vehicle was hit by Israeli aircraft. Hamas says that some of the equipment in it was recoverable and allowed them to extract “valuable information”.

A senior Israeli officer known as Lt.-Col. “M.”, along with a local Hamas commander and six other Palestinians, died during a firefight after the elite unit was discovered. Hamas claims that the unit had crossed into Gaza several times in the past year. Last week it published photographs of eight suspected Israeli special forces soldiers, calling on members of the public to contact its military wing if they had any information about them and their activities.

Israel Defence Forces Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot described the operation as “very meaningful” to Israel’s security.

Hamas’s leader Ismail Haniyeh has received an invitation to visit Moscow. Russia has hosted several rounds of reconciliation talks between Hamas and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party. On Friday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Russia was willing to mediate between Israel and the Palestinians. He said it is “impossible to create stability in the Middle East, including in Libya and Iraq, without a solution to the oldest regional problem, the Palestinian problem.”