Everything about Operation Arnon, the audacious rescue of four Israeli hostages – Noa Argamani, 26, Almog Meir Jan, 22, Andrey Kozlov, 27, and Shlomi Ziv, 41 – from two heavily guarded buildings in Al-Nuseirat, Gaza, seemed to be mission impossible.
For starters, the raid – by undercover operatives of Yamam, the secretive anti-terrorism unit of the Israeli police, and Shin Bet, the Israeli equivalent of MI5 – took place in broad daylight, not under cover of darkness.
It also involved attacking two buildings full of heavily armed men simultaneously, slap bang in the middle of one of the world’s most overcrowded refugee camps and an area already teeming with Hamas terrorists who had been anticipating a raid for weeks and had built up security and fortifications accordingly.
