Operation Breaking Dawn in the Gaza Strip began on Friday afternoon, at exactly 4:16 p.m. The opening of the operation was well planned over time by the IDF’s Operations Wing. That was also where it was decided a few weeks ago that Israel had no choice but to deal with the senior members of the military division of Islamic Jihad, who were behind many attacks and murders committed by Palestinians in recent months.
The intelligence experts of the Shin Bet marked the terrorist leaders. The political ranks in Israel approved the “handling” of them, knowing clearly that this was the only way to stop the further spread of attacks, and that it would also send a clear message to Hamas and Hezbollah that there is no place where the perpetrators of attacks and murders can hide.
It turned out that the two senior terrorists of the Islamic Jihad, whose hands are full of the blood of many Jews who were murdered and wounded on their personal orders, were afraid of the Israelis getting to them, and they therefore often wandered at night to other hiding and sleeping places.
One was the commander of the Jihad in the north of the Gaza Strip and the other was the commander in the south of the Gaza Strip. Both were veteran terrorists whose mission in life was to kill and injure as many Jews as possible. Several times, everything was ready to target them, but at the last moment they did not sleep in their usual place, or when they were in their safe house, there were others there, including children.
Throughout this entire period of waiting for the right time for their elimination, the members of the Islamic Jihad continued with their attempted attacks, mainly throughout Yehudah and Shomron. Night after night, hundreds of Israeli soldiers and policemen went on missions to capture the terrorists, and nearly 800 of them were captured and arrested during the last six months alone. But that wasn’t enough to stop the terrorism, which also reached Bnei Brak and Tel Aviv, Elad and Be’er Sheva, the Old City of Yerushalayim, and more.
The Shin Bet placed as a third imperative—after an attack on the two senior Jihad officials—the capture of the commander of the Jihad’s military arm in Yehudah and Shomron, a 61-year-old senior terrorist who for almost 35 years has only been engaged in harming Jews. He was caught and thrown into Israeli prisons seven times during his years of activity. Always, a day or two after he was released, he once more donned a terrorist’s uniform and resumed his attacks.
THE ATTACK ON THE VILLA
The Shin Bet preferred to capture him alive, in order to extract intelligence information about his organization’s field operatives in Judea and Samaria. But like his friends from the Gaza Strip, he wandered night after night from one hiding place to another. Last week, however, the Shin Bet reported that he was in a secret villa, in the area of the refugee camp near Shechem. A large IDF force, accompanied by members of the Shin Bet, boarded vehicles with Arab license plates, and, disguised as local Arabs, arrived at that villa where the senior terrorist was hiding.
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