No one in the Gaza Strip remembers anything quite as embarrassing as this. On March 24, Mazen Faqha returned home from a night on the town with his wife and children. He dropped them off and then took his car to an underground parking lot. His body was found a short while later, right next to the car, with four bullets in his head, shot from a pistol with a silencer. Hamas immediately shut the Erez border crossing and ordered Gaza's fishermen not to set out for sea until further notice. Meanwhile, Hamas security forces took up positions along the border with Israel and at the crossings, hoping to catch the assassination squad responsible for Faqha's death as it tried to leave Gaza.
Their efforts ended in disappointment. No one in Hamas doubts that Israel was behind the assassination. The current assessment by Hamas is that it was carried out by a team that entered the Gaza Strip by sea, after collecting high-quality intelligence. The assassins knew everything about Faqha's movements in real time, even that he would be alone in the garage. They killed him quietly and then disappeared without leaving a trace.
No one can remember a similar incident in Gaza. Israeli assassinations generally take place from the air or involve remote controlled missiles. Densely populated Gaza has always been considered volatile and dangerous. In other words, no sane intelligence organization would send a hit squad into it. Well, that is no longer the case. The Israel Defense Forces has many elite units such as Matkal and Shayetet 13, which are able to get in and out of Gaza without anyone noticing. The team behind the operation seems to have received a steady flow of intimate, high-quality intelligence, leaving Hamas stumbling about in the dark.
Israel has not assumed responsibility for the operation. Instead, it is maintaining absolute silence. Nevertheless, all the other players in the Middle East are convinced that this was Israel's doing. Just days before the assassination, on March 20, Director of the Shin Bet Nadav Argaman told the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that as Passover approaches (April 10-17), Hamas is expected to intensify its efforts to launch attacks in Israel or the West Bank.
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