Israel Rescues 4 Hostages in Assault That Killed
Scores of Gazans
The news was met with jubilation in Israel, where
tensions over the hostages’ safety have been rising in recent months.
Aaron
Boxerman Raja AbdulrahimSteve Lohr
By Aaron
Boxerman, Raja Abdulrahim and Steve Lohr
June 8,
2024
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/08/world/middleeast/israel-hostages-nuseirat-gaza.html
Israeli
soldiers and special operations police rescued four hostages from Gaza on
Saturday amid a heavy air and ground assault and flew them back to Israel by
helicopter to be reunited with their families. The news was met with jubilation
in Israel, where anxieties over the fate of the roughly 120 remaining captives
have been rising after eight months of war.
Residents
in the town of Nuseirat, where the hostages were being held, reported intense
bombardments during the rescue operation. Khalil al-Daqran, an official at a
hospital in the city, told reporters that scores of Palestinians had been
killed and that the hospital’s wards and corridors were packed with the
wounded.
Rear Adm.
Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military spokesman, told reporters the rescue
mission took place around 11 a.m. Saturday, when forces located the four
hostages in two separate buildings where they were being held by Hamas
militants. He said the Israeli forces came under fire but managed to extract
the hostages in two helicopters. One special forces police officer died.
The freed
hostages — Noa Argamani, 26, Almog Meir Jan, 22, Andrey Kozlov, 27, and Shlomi
Ziv, 41 — were kidnapped by Palestinian militants from the Nova music festival
during the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, when about 1,200 people were killed in
Israel and 250 taken hostage, Israel says. All four were in good medical
condition and were transferred to a hospital in Israel for further
examinations, the Israeli authorities said in a statement.
The fate of
the hostages has been a source of intense political pressure on the Israeli
prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, amid the broader criticism that his
government, for its own reasons, is in no hurry to wind down the conflict or to
address the issue of who should govern Gaza after the war.
Given the
hostage rescue, Benny Gantz, a member of Mr. Netanyahu’s war cabinet who has
threatened to depart over Mr. Netanyahu’s refusal to talk about a postwar plan
for Gaza, indefinitely postponed a news conference scheduled for Saturday
evening, citing “recent events.”
Mr. Hagari,
the Israeli military spokesman, said the Israeli Air
Force
struck Nuseirat during the rescue in order to enable Israeli forces to extract
the hostages safely.
“This was a
mission in the heart of a civilian neighborhood, where Hamas had intentionally
hidden among homes where there were civilians, and armed militants guarding the
hostages,” Mr. Hagari said.
Videos
showed people running for cover as bombs rained down. After the airstrikes, the
streets were so clogged with rubble that ambulances and emergency services in
central Gaza were unable to respond to many of the calls to transport the
wounded to hospitals, the Gazan Health Ministry said.
Video from
inside Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, near Nuseirat, shared by the ministry showed
chaotic scenes as medical staff struggled to treat bloodied victims lying side
by side on the floor. Two men held up IV bags while next to them a wounded
person, whose face was bandaged, writhed under a blanket.
Reports of
the numbers killed and wounded varied wildly in the confusion after the attack.
Two Gaza health officials said that more than 200 people were killed in the
strikes in Nuseirat, including women and children. They did not say how many of
those killed were militants.
Mr. Hagari
said the number killed should be “less than 100,” based on information he had
seen. It was not possible to verify either number.
In a post
on Telegram, Abu Obeida, the spokesman of Hamas’s military wing, said Israel
killed some hostages during its rescue mission on Saturday. His claims could
not be independently verified. He also suggested that Hamas would take punitive
measures against the hostages remaining in Gaza.
The main
Israeli television stations switched to live coverage of the rescue and its
aftermath, breaking the customary quiet and prerecorded programming typical of
the Sabbath.
Spontaneous
celebrations broke out across the country, and Israeli television broadcast
images of the gatherings. In Tel Aviv, a lifeguard at the beach announced the
news of the rescue to a cheering crowd of sunbathers from the lifeguard tower,
according to social media posts.
The
abduction of Ms. Argamani, in particular, became a symbol of the brutality of
the Hamas attack on Oct. 7. In a video from the scene that day, Palestinian
assailants can be seen driving Ms. Argamani away on a motorcycle as she cries
for help and reaches out to her boyfriend, Avinatan Or. His fate remains
unknown.
After her
rescue, Ms. Argamani spoke with Mr. Netanyahu. “I’m so emotional, it’s been so
long since I heard Hebrew,” she said in a recording of the call released by the
prime minister’s office.
In a
recorded video statement, Yaakov Argamani, Ms. Argamani’s father, thanked
everyone who was involved in securing his daughter’s freedom, including Mr.
Netanyahu.
“But we
cannot forget — there are still 120 hostages who must be released,” Mr.
Argamani said, calling on Israelis to join a weekly rally in solidarity with
the remaining hostages in Gaza. “We must make every effort, in every way
possible, to bring them here to Israel, to their families.”
President
Biden said Saturday in Paris that he welcomed “the safe rescue of four hostages
that were returned to their families in Israel,” adding, “We won’t stop working
until all the hostages come home and a cease-fire is reached, and it’s
essential to happen.” Mr. Biden spoke after meeting with President Emmanuel
Macron of France.
Yoav
Gallant, Israel’s defense minister, hailed what he called a “complex operation”
by Israeli soldiers, special forces and intelligence, who he said had “operated
with extraordinary courage under heavy fire.”
Israeli
intelligence officers, Mr. Hagari said, worked for weeks in an attempt to
assemble the pieces required for the operation to fall into place. Herzi
Halevi, the military chief of staff, as well as the head of Israel’s domestic
intelligence service, both gave the final go-ahead on Saturday morning.
The Israeli
police special forces unit, the Yamam, was also involved, and one of its
members, Chief Inspector Arnon Zamora, was seriously wounded in combat and
later died of his injuries, an Israeli police spokesman said.
There was
an American role as well. A team of U.S. hostage recovery officials stationed
in Israel assisted in the Israeli military’s effort by providing intelligence
and other support, an American official said, speaking without attribution to
discuss continuing operations.
The last
successful raid to free hostages was in February, when Israeli special
operations forces raided a building in the southern Gazan city of Rafah and
freed two captives held by Hamas.
The first
hostage to have been rescued alive by Israeli security forces was Pvt. Ori
Megidish, a soldier. Her rescue took place in late October, three weeks after
the Hamas-led attack and days after Israel began its full-scale ground invasion
of northern Gaza. Private Megidish, then 19, was abducted from the Nahal Oz
military base, along Israel’s border with Gaza, where she served as a field
observer.
While the
freeing of the hostages was cause for celebration on Saturday, it would seem an
unlikely scenario for recovering all of the 120 or so who remain captive. That
would appear to require a political settlement, which is what Secretary of
State Antony J. Blinken will be seeking to put together when he travels to the
Mideast in the coming days.
The
secretary is expected to push for a plan calling for a temporary cease-fire
that would build to a permanent truce, a release of hostages and an eventual
withdrawal of Israel from Gaza.
The trip
will include stops in Egypt, Israel, Jordan and Qatar and will be Mr. Blinken’s
eighth trip to the region since the conflict began. In a statement on Friday,
the State Department said Mr. Blinken would urge an agreement on the cease-fire
proposal to “alleviate suffering in Gaza, enable a massive surge in
humanitarian assistance and allow Palestinians to return to their
neighborhoods.”
Isabel
Kershner and Adam Rasgon contributed reporting from Jerusalem, Yara Bayoumy
from London and Michael D. Shear from Paris.
Aaron
Boxerman is a Times reporting fellow with a focus on international news. More
about Aaron Boxerman
Raja
Abdulrahim is a Middle East correspondent based in Jerusalem covering the
Levant. More about Raja Abdulrahim
Steve Lohr
writes about technology and its impact on the economy, jobs and the workplace.
More about Steve Lohr
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