From Times of Israel on the dramatic rescue of Israeli hostages Fernando Marman and Norberto Har:
IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari offers details on the rescue of hostages Marman and Har.“The IDF and the Shin Bet have been working on this operation for a long time,” he says.“Conditions were not ripe to carry it out until now, and we waited for them to ripen.”He adds: “Reaching the target in the heart of Rafah was very complex.”Forces clandestinely arrived at the target at around 1 a.m., and carried out a very complex action on the premises and the second floor where the hostages were held.”He says preparations included “backup, a major aerial envelope, and intimate intel.”He says forces then broke into the building through a locked door and exchanged fire with gunmen in the building and in adjacent buildings, while extracting the hostages to armored vehicles.“There was intense firepower from the air. Fire was opened from nearby buildings. The Air Force struck intensively there,” he says. At the same time, the armored corps also provided cover for the extraction.Hagari says “many terrorists were eliminated tonight in this action.”One soldier was lightly injured, but beyond that no Israelis were hurt.“The entire operation lasted about an hour from start to finish.”
Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, Egypt and the US have been pressuring Israel not to operate in Rafah. After seeing that hostages are kept there and Israel saved some, practically no Israelis will agree.
The terrorists, knowing that their hope that Israel won't invade Rafah have dwindled, decided to make up a story about massive massacres there without mentioning the rescue. Islamic Jihad's Palestine Today almost admits that terrorists were killed, but not quite:
The Israeli occupation committed a massacre in the city of Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip, leaving dozens of martyrs dead and hundreds wounded.Medical sources reported that more than a hundred martyrs so far and hundreds of injuries arrived at Al-Kuwaiti Hospital and Abu Youssef Al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah, after the occupation aircraft targeted several homes and mosques with dozens of raids, noting that the sounds of violent clashes between the Palestinian resistance and the occupation army were taking place near the vicinity.
Ramallah News reports that "The Palestinian Red Crescent said that the city of Rafah is witnessing violent Israeli raids concentrated in the center of the city, targeting inhabited homes opposite the headquarters of the Red Crescent Society."
This indicates that Hamas is keeping hostages near areas like medical facilities in order to dissuade rescue attempts.
Altogether this was an extremely impressive operation. It points to the need for the IDF to go into Rafah in order to get rid of the rest of the major Hamas battalions and leaders - if there are any left who haven't already fled under tunnels from Rafah to Egypt.
This also points to how Israeli successes breed more success. Intel received from detained terrorists, computers and documents captured make it easier for Israel to mount pinpoint operations that can be better planned and better executed.
