Israeli pause on strikes in Gaza suspends deadly hunt for October 7 terrorists

Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian is The Times of Israel's military correspondent

On Wednesday, a Palestinian terrorist who invaded Israel during the October 7, 2023, onslaught was captured by Israeli troops at a crossing with the Gaza Strip.

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The member of Hamas’s elite Nukhba Force had requested a permit to deliver private sector goods inside the Strip and was granted one by the Shin Bet security agency, according to Israeli security sources.

Upon arriving at the Gazan side of the Kerem Shalom Crossing in a truck to collect the goods, he was apprehended by Israeli troops, the sources said.

Up until last week, it is possible that the truck driver would not have been captured.

Instead, he would have likely been targeted with deadly firepower, as part of a special operation led by the military and Shin Bet to hunt down and kill every Palestinian terrorist involved in the October 7, 2023, invasion and massacre.

As reported last month by The Times of Israel, and confirmed on Saturday night, the IDF and Shin Bet have devoted significant time and resources to eliminating the terrorists who took part in the October 7 atrocities, in which some 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage.

Officers of a special joint IDF-Shin Bet unit, dubbed Nili, have painstakingly worked over the last three years to identify, find and eliminate the thousands of Gazans allegedly involved in the atrocities.

It has built its list of names of Gazans who invaded Israeli territory by using a plethora of video and photographic evidence of the attack, much of it captured by the terrorists themselves, and running the footage through facial recognition software. Also on the list are all Hamas leaders involved in orchestrating the massacre, according to Israeli officials.

Of the estimated 5,000 terrorists who planned or participated in the October 7 attack and its aftermath, including those who may have remained in Gaza but helped hold hostages, around 2,800 have been confirmed by the military to have been killed. That number is largely made up of terrorists killed during the onslaught and others targeted in the Strip amid the war.

Another 300 alleged perpetrators have been captured by Israel and await judgment by special military tribunals, which have yet to be set up.

Israeli officials have invoked the aftermath of the 1972 Munich Olympics as a precedent for the retribution campaign against the October 7 terrorists, pointing to the years-long and largely unsuccessful Mossad-led effort to track down and eliminate anyone linked to the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes during the Games.

In the past few months, the IDF and Shin Bet appeared to have stepped up the large-scale retribution campaign, The Times of Israel reported last month. Though the sides were technically in a ceasefire, Israel appears to have justified the strikes by portraying them as defensive measures against terrorists who posed a threat to troops, meaning the IDF was permitted to act against them during the pause in fighting.

The strikes continued following the article’s publication, but stopped abruptly at the start of the month.

On Tuesday, Israeli security sources said the military had recently tightened its policy for “targeted elimination” strikes — as opposed to strikes against immediate threats — in the Gaza Strip.

Such strikes now require prior approval from IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, while they had previously required only the approval of IDF Southern Command chief Maj. Gen. Yaniv Asor or various division commanders operating in the Strip.

Since the order was issued, there do not appear to have been any assassinations of October 7 terrorists.

The last deadly Israeli attack in Gaza took place in the evening of August 3, with two reported dead after a strike hit a car in Gaza City’s Sheikh Ijlin neighborhood. Two days earlier, 19 people were reported killed in strikes in Gaza City.

The pause in attacks in Gaza came after the US-led Board of Peace published a roadmap for the disarmament of Hamas that called on Israel to halt strikes in the Strip.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that Israel rejected the plan, but as of several hours after he spoke, Israeli strikes in the Strip had yet to resume.

Touring the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, Zamir said that the army would continue to “operate proactively” against Hamas and “systematically” hit the terror group.

“We have significantly weakened [Hamas] and changed the security reality,” Zamir said, according to remarks provided by the army. “We will not allow a threat to emerge on our borders as we experienced on October 7.”

Despite his words, though, Israel’s guns remain silenced in Gaza.

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