TEL AVIV — News of the release early Monday morning of two Israeli hostages held in Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip sent shockwaves through Israel. Israelis had waited more than four months for this moment.
It was the first time since Hamas invaded southern Israel on Oct. 7 that luck appeared to turn and side with them. From the complete collapse of all its intelligence and operational systems that enabled the Hamas massacre to several failed attempts to release some of the hostages taken by the group, everything that could go wrong with Israel’s war did. Then at 1 a.m. on Feb. 12, Israeli special forces, acting on pinpoint intelligence and backed by massive aerial firepower, freed two of the estimated 136 Israelis held in the Gaza Strip. Previous attempts ended up killing several soldiers and failed, except for an Oct. 30 operation that freed captive soldier Ori Megidish.
When the commander of the SWAT team that raided the two-story Rafah house was heard announcing over the communications system, "The diamonds are in our hands," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the nation’s top security brass watching the raid unfold from the operation’s command center could finally relax. The air force commander was also in the room, overseeing the bombardments that created a distraction for the special forces’ raid and protected the evacuation of the troops and the hostages from the area. Dozens of Palestinians, among them Hamas fighters but also civilians including children, were killed in the raid.
The freed hostages, Louis Norberto Har, 70, and Fernando Simon Marman, 60, dual Israeli-Argentine nationals, were initially held in underground Hamas tunnels but were later moved to a Rafah apartment, just a few kilometers west of Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak from where they were abducted. Their release leaves behind 134 abductees. According to a New York Times report based on Israeli military information, at least 29 of them are dead.
