A group of Israeli commandos raided a hospital in Jenin, a Palestinian city in the West Bank, and killed three Hamas-linked terrorists before they could reach the weapons they had stockpiled there.
The stunning raid, which did not harm civilians in the hospital and had no Israeli military casualties, stunned even Israelis, who are used to daring raids to kill terrorists and rescue hostages.
According to the Times of Israel, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) noted that the terrorists in the hospital had been planning an October 7-style attack on Israel. The attack took just 10 minutes, and footage from the hospital was aired in Palestinian media.
The Times noted: “The Israeli forces reportedly entered the medical center at 5:30 a.m. dressed as doctors, nurses, and Palestinian women, headed to a room on the third floor, and shot the surprised trio dead in their beds before escaping the building unscathed. The commandos reportedly used guns with silencers in the raid.”
Video of the raid went viral on Instagram, showing IDF soldiers dressed as doctors, nurses, and even Palestinian women:
The scene was reminiscent of fictionalized Israeli operations in the TV series Fauda, which has played a role in the conflict, as one crew member on the show was killed and one cast member was wounded during the course of their reserve IDF service in Gaza.
The IDF said in a statement:
During a joint IDF, ISA [Israel Security Agency, or Shin Bet], and Israel Police counterterrorism activity overnight, Mohammed Jalamneh, a Hamas terrorist who had recently been involved in promoting significant terrorist activity and was hiding in the “Ibn Sina” Hospital in Jenin was neutralized. The wanted suspect also carried a gun, which was confiscated by the security forces.
Mohammed Jalamneh, 27, who had been in the Jenin Camp for a long period, had contacts with Hamas headquarters abroad and was even wounded when he tried to promote a car bombing attack. In addition, Jalamneh transferred weapons and ammunition to terrorists in order to promote shooting attacks, and planned a raid attack inspired by the October 7th massacre.
Along with Jalamneh, two additional terrorists who hid inside the hospital were neutralized. Mohammed Ghazawi from the Jenin Camp, a terrorist operative of the Jenin Battalions who was involved in numerous attacks including firing at IDF soldiers in the area, and Basel Ghazawi from the Jenin Camp, Mohammed’s brother, an Islamic Jihad terrorist organization operative involved in terror activities in the area.
Jalamneh planned to carry out a terror attack in the immediate future and used the hospital as a hiding place and therefore was neutralized. Israeli security forces will continue to act against any threat that would endanger the security of Israeli civilians.
For a long time, wanted suspects have been hiding in hospitals and using them as a base for planning terrorist activities and carrying out terror attacks, while they assume that the exploitation of hospitals will serve as protection against counterterrorism activities of Israeli security forces. This is another example of the cynical use of civilian areas and hospitals as shelters and human shields by terrorist organisations.
Palestinian terrorists have repeatedly used hospitals to store weapons, move hostages, hide tunnels, and launch attacks, which violates international humanitarian law and forfeits the protection normally granted to hospitals under the laws of armed conflict.
Separately, the IDF located and destroyed rocket launchers that had been used on Monday to fire a barrage of rockets at central Israel, including the Tel Aviv area, the first such attack in several weeks, as Hamas’s capacity to attack Israel has been degraded.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the 2021 e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now updated with a new foreword. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.