Gaza
Israel says it seized Hamas's internal security chief in Gaza City
Image credit: Israel Katz — Itzhak Harari via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0) · License
Original Reporting
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Israeli forces raided western Gaza City on Tuesday morning and took away a man the Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, described as a senior Hamas figure, in an operation that residents and Palestinian medical sources say was accompanied by more than a dozen air strikes.
Katz, speaking from the border community of Netiv Haasara, said that "a short while ago, a senior Hamas terrorist was arrested," and that the raid followed what he called a standing policy of pursuing Hamas commanders rather than waiting for threats to materialise.
An Israeli security source told the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth that the man detained runs Hamas's internal security and counter-intelligence apparatus, and that he was flown into Israel wounded.
Hamas-linked outlets in Gaza disputed the description, saying the man taken is a more junior officer than the Israeli account claims. Neither version has been independently verified, and the Israeli military has not named him.
What residents describe#
Palestinian medical sources reported that three people were killed, among them a woman and a child, and that others were wounded. Some Palestinian accounts put the toll at four across more than eighteen strikes. The Israeli military said only that it struck "a number of targets" to remove threats to its forces and that no Israeli soldiers were hurt.
Residents of the western neighbourhoods described an armed unit entering on foot before dawn cover gave way, heavy explosions without pause, and an exchange of fire on the ground.
The militia question#
Several Israeli outlets reported that the ground element may not have been Israeli soldiers at all, but fighters from one of the armed Palestinian groups Israel arms and shelters inside the areas of Gaza its army still controls. Saudi media carried the same reading, describing an attempted abduction by militias operating with Israel that was detected before it finished.
That distinction matters for readers in Gaza. Since 2025 the Israeli military has openly supported such groups, the best known of them the Popular Forces built by Yasser Abu Shabab in the Rafah area until he was shot dead on 4 December 2025 and Ghassan Duhine declared himself his successor.
United Nations officials and aid agencies documented that armed men in that orbit looted aid convoys while the army let them work.
The ceasefire mechanism#
The raid lands inside a ceasefire that is a year old in October and that neither side has kept.
On 25 August an official of the Board of Peace, the body created to implement the October 2025 agreement under its director-general Nickolay Mladenov, issued a rare public instruction to Israel through the American-led monitoring channel: "Israel, too, must comply with the ceasefire; military action cannot extend beyond responding to genuine and imminent threats."
Israeli reports on Tuesday said the Board of Peace is examining this operation. Israel's chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, has said the pursuit of those responsible for 7 October will continue until they are, in his words, eliminated, and that his army will take every opportunity as threats emerge.
Palestinians in Gaza City spent Tuesday counting the cost of an argument conducted over their heads about which threats are genuine, which are imminent, and who is allowed to decide.
