Hostages in Gaza are being moved, with Hamas moving some from apartment to apartment to conceal their whereabouts, while others are believed to be in underground tunnels.
Meanwhile, in a “fusion cell” quietly formed in Israel last fall, U.S. and Israeli intelligence and military analysts shared images from drones and satellites, as well as communications intercepts and anything else that might provide clues to Israel. Hostage location.
There is more than one war going on in Gaza.
For the most part, the world has seen airstrikes and ground incursions that Israel says are aimed at dismantling Hamas and reducing much of its territory to rubble, triggering a humanitarian crisis. But the rescue of four hostages on Saturday was a reminder that Israel and Hamas are engaged in another, less visible battle:
The militants are determined to keep the hostages they took in a deadly attack on Israel on October 7 as bargaining chips. The Israelis were determined to bring them home.
For more than eight months, the militants have had the upper hand.
Israeli and U.S. officials said they did not know where many of the hostages were being held. Even if they did, in many cases the rescue mission simply wouldn’t be possible.
Israel has rescued seven hostages so far, but the harsh reality is that many more have died since the war began, either in combat or at the hands of Hamas. Israel has found far more dead bodies than living hostages.
While Saturday’s rescue operation in Israel was a welcome relief, Israeli and U.S. officials said the complexity of the operation itself and the violence that followed underscored the challenges of finding and rescuing the hostages. One rescue worker died; Israeli commandos killed many Hamas fighters; many civilians were killed in the crossfire. Hamas also said three other hostages were killed in Israeli airstrikes, but an IDF spokesman denied that claim.
It’s unclear how many more opportunities there will be for rescue attacks, at least from the ground. The hostages rescued so far were only from apartments. Now, current and former Israeli and U.S. officials say Hamas may change tactics and seek to move more hostages into tunnels, possibly out of range of the commandos.
U.S. and Israeli officials say the reality is that rescue operations will be exceptional. Only diplomacy can bring most of the remaining hostages home. U.S. officials are pressuring Israel and Hamas to agree to a deal to return the hostages as part of a truce.
“We have to remember that the release of the four hostages is ultimately a tactical achievement and does not change the strategic aspects,” said Israeli reserve Lt. Col. Avi Kallo, who led a military intelligence unit responsible for handling prisoners of war and military intelligence. department. “Hamas still has dozens of hostages, most, if not all, of whom will not be released during the operation and can only be rescued as part of a ceasefire agreement.”
While freeing the hostages has been a top priority since the war began, some U.S. officials say Israel has varying levels of focus on that goal. In December, three hostages were unintentionally killed when Israeli troops shot dead three men fleeing their kidnappers in northern Gaza, a clear sign that the Israeli military is not always adaptable to hostage hunts. Israeli officials said the military learned from the mistake.
Israeli officials said 251 people were believed to have been arrested in the October 7 terrorist attack. Last November, Israel and Hamas reached an agreement to release 105 of them.
since then, Forty-three of the remaining hostages have been officially declared dead; many, though not all, are believed to have died in captivity. Israeli officials said privately that they believed there were fewer than 60 survivors. U.S. officials say there are five dual Gaza citizens who are still alive, and the bodies of three Americans seized by Hamas.
Throughout its history, Israel has spared no effort to free hostages. The long-established principle is to use military force as the first option to rescue Israelis. When rescue was not possible, Israel struck deals — sometimes giving up more than a thousand Palestinian prisoners for a captured Israeli soldier.
Britain also played a role in the operation to track the hostages, which went beyond just determining their location. Military and intelligence officials are also looking for patterns, trying to understand how long Hamas is holding people in one place before moving them to another. If they can discern a pattern, they can better determine the window of time to launch a rescue operation.
The intelligence collected is often fragmented. A hint that a particular hostage is still alive, or a clue about the group that may be holding that hostage, may not reveal the exact location, but could hint at which areas of Gaza need to step up information-gathering efforts. Although no one can be sure of the accuracy of this information, once the Israelis have identified a location with some degree of confidence that the hostages may remain there for some time, intense planning begins.
Early in the war, some intelligence officials believed that most of the hostages were being held in the tunnels. But living underground has proven difficult for Hamas commanders, while keeping hostages in the apartments of the group’s supporters has been easier.
As the war approached, Israel’s intelligence on the hostages improved thanks to seized documents, interrogations of captured Hamas fighters and assistance from the United States and Britain.
Israeli and U.S. officials believe some hostages may be moving more now than at the start of the war. But U.S. and Israeli officials say the area where Hamas can hide its hostages has shrunk while the chances of finding them have increased, given Israel’s devastating artillery fire on the tiny territory.
Beyond that, communication between the Hamas brigade and its central leadership has broken down as operations in Gaza have become more difficult, according to U.S. officials. As a result, some hostages stayed in their hideouts longer.
While U.S. officials believe Hamas was involved in the handling of all the hostages, some are not being held by the group but are controlled by allied militant groups, including Palestinian Islamic Jihad. As a result, Hamas leadership appears unsure of how many hostages there are in Gaza, according to U.S. and Israeli officials.
Israeli and U.S. officials are increasingly concerned about the health of the hostages, who have suffered mental and physical abuse during their lengthy confinement.
“After nearly nine months in captivity, the hostages are in such a degraded state, both mentally and physically, that rescuers may not even recognize them,” said retired U.S. President Richard D. Clarke. ) said the general.
While Israel is working to find the hostages, Hamas leaders are working to keep them hidden – realizing they offer the best leverage in ceasefire negotiations.
But they also play another role. A small group of hostages is believed to be being held near Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in Gaza. They were human shields, making it harder for Israel to target him.
The United States and Israel have had difficulty determining the exact location of Sinwar and the hostages. U.S. officials say he has moved around Gaza, including once hiding under Rafah, and is now likely back under Khan Younis, Gaza’s second-largest city. A U.S. official said the network of tunnels there was so vast that neither the U.S. nor Israel could pinpoint his precise location.
Hamas leaders also issued standing orders to the hostage-taking militants that if they thought Israeli troops were coming, the first thing they should do was to shoot the characters, according to Israeli officials. If, as Hamas claims, the hostages were killed on Saturday, it could have been by the militants and not as a result of Israeli airstrikes. But for now, Israeli and U.S. officials can neither confirm nor refute Hamas’s claims.
U.S. officials said that since the first days after the October 7 attack on Israel, the U.S. military had flown surveillance drones over the Gaza Strip to assist in rescuing hostages. Officials said at least six MQ-9 Reaper aircraft controlled by special operations forces were involved in the mission to monitor for signs of life.
A senior Israeli official said that British and American drones are already able to provide information that Israeli drones cannot collect. U.S. military officials say U.S. surveillance drones have essentially the same onboard sensors as British and Israeli drones, but the sheer number of U.S. aircraft means more territory can be monitored more frequently and for longer periods of time.
Officials say drones cannot map Hamas’ vast network of underground tunnels — Israel is using highly classified ground-based sensors to do that — but their infrared radars can detect fighters or others entering and exiting the surface Heat signature at tunnel entrance.
Intelligence sharing between the United States and Israel related to the Gaza war initially focused on hostage rescue efforts but expanded cooperation over time, three current or former senior U.S. officials said.
“They are part of the largest intelligence effort that Israel has ever conducted, and probably the largest intelligence effort that has ever been conducted,” Colonel Carlo said of the Americans and British.
Adam Goldman Reporting from Washington also contributed.
