Moain al-Arabid, the head of Hamas’s Internal Security Apparatus, captured by Israeli forces.
It’s Wednesday, September 2, and suppose that at the end of the Cold War, the U.S. wanted to kidnap the head of the KGB, or in 2010 wanted to grab the head of the Taliban’s General Directorate of Intelligence. Not the same level of difficulty, but the manual is essentially the same. Jack Ryan accomplishes the former in Tom Clancy’s The Cardinal of the Kremlin through blackmail, but other tradecraft options include a honey trap or simple bribery. Israel is fond of a more audacious strategy: grab them from the heart of the capital.
Early yesterday morning, under the cover of air strikes, Shin Bet forces raided a building in the heart of Gaza City and walked out with Moain al-Arabid—the head of Hamas’s Internal Security Apparatus. The man is Hamas’s equivalent to Shin Bet Chief David Zini, but where Zini protects the citizens of Israel, al-Arabid is a central node in the oppression of Gazans, his primary tasks involve purging collaborators, enforcing loyalty, and protecting the leadership.
A video of the van involved in the abduction.
Before Defense Minister Israel Katz confirmed the operation had succeeded, every Hamas channel was boasting that “alert resistance members” had foiled the raid through sheer vigilance. When further details surfaced, they pivoted to damage control: yes, a hostile force had been exposed and made to pay, and yes, three collaborators were arrested—but the Israelis had only managed to grab an unnamed “senior member” who “happened to be present at the scene,” not the figure they were after.
Now that a picture of a captured al-Arabid has been published, Hamas is working to downplay him as a mere commander within the apparatus rather than its head. But official Hamas publications named him head of internal security for Gaza City back in 2015—eleven years and dozens of targeted killings of senior officials ago. He and most of the current Hamas leadership owe Israel’s security forces a debt of gratitude: most of their promotions were provided by the IDF. By any account, he is a treasure trove—the custodian of secrets on the security of Hamas’s leadership, its counter-espionage, its network of collaborators.
Netanyahu called him one of the most senior figures in the organization, responsible for hiding and moving hostages, concealing senior officials, and rebuilding Hamas’s shattered capabilities.
But there is a more important point made by this operation. Change the setting from Gaza to Hebron or Jenin and the story becomes considerably less extraordinary—Shin Bet and IDF forces routinely extract terrorists from the hearts of those cities. Not to diminish the tradecraft behind the operation, but its success is, in essence, the fruit of the security regime Israel has established in Gaza over the past three years. Not quite as accessible as much of Judea and Samaria, perhaps—but one might say Gaza City now looks more like Kabul in 2010 than Moscow in 1987.
The new Likud campaign ad published this week.
The Likud boycott video is probably the most talked-about thing this week. The video opens on a visibly worried mother discovering that her young son, Yuval, is being socially ostracized and bullied by his classmates at school. She reads cruel messages sent to her son by other children, only to turn and—presumably to her regret—see that the “Anyone but Bibi” signs she was preparing are similarly cruel. But surprisingly, Netanyahu is shaping up to be one of the least boycotted figures in the coming election. In fact, the Likud under his leadership sits only in fifth place in this week’s poll.
About half the public, 48 percent, want to boycott the Arab parties—including 35 percent of opposition voters as a whole and 37 percent of Eisenkot’s voters. The Haredi parties come next, at 31 percent, including nine percent of the current coalition’s own voters. Golan, Smotrich, and Ben Gvir share the next spot at 29 percent, and only after them, at just 19 percent, come Likud and Netanyahu.
There’s an interesting phenomenon here, tied to the makeup of the last coalition. In the past, under the banner of “Just Not Bibi,” the opposition was willing to hold its nose and cooperate with the Haredim, or with the settler right. I won’t forget how shocked I was when, in 2015, leader of Meretz Zehava Galon told me that to bring Netanyahu down she’d agree to sit even with Avigdor Lieberman—back then, a fascist idol in the temple. Since then Bennett has become prime minister, and Lieberman is a darling of the camp.
But the last term, which dealt with matters of substance (judicial reform, dramatic expansion of settlement in the West Bank, the Haredi exemption), turned Netanyahu’s own partners into the ones the opposition wants to be rid of first. Have we opened the door here to a relatively secular, relatively egalitarian unity government after the election?
And one last note to the six percent of coalition voters who want to boycott Netanyahu: you may not have noticed, but you represent the first instance in history of someone boycotting themselves.
This is an excerpt from my weekly column in Israel Hayom.
English Editor: Ari Tatarka
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I wish Shin Bet could kidnap the leaders of Masar Badil here in the United States. They are making Jewish students’ lives miserable on campuses across the US. They are violently anti-Semitic and attack synagogues in their pursuit of river-to-sea goals.