During the war, sometimes the IDF specifically avoided killing certain Gazan terrorists who knew where Israeli hostages were kept in order to preserve the possibility of using them to find the hostages, an IDF senior intelligence hostage affairs commander revealed for the first time on Thursday.
This disclosure resolved a two year mystery of how Israel managed to kill Hamas's leaders, while not losing the ability to locate the hostages. At the start of the war, some officials worried Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif might be unkillable because they might be the only ones who knew certain hostage information.
The IDF intelligence officer said, "there is always a dual dilemma" about whether to "let security forces kill terrorists to remove a threat" versus to intentionally avoid killing them to continue to gain intelligence from them, or in this case, use them to maintain updated intelligence and rescue possibilities regarding hostages.
Further, the hostages' affairs intelligence commander stated regarding Ran Gvili that, "Hamas never knew where he was. Islamic Jihad did not even know."
This admission was notable given multiple comments by Israeli political officials in recent weeks that Islamic Jihad did know where he was buried and raised questions about whether the issue was being used to push back on Trump administration pressure to proceed with aspects of Phase II of the ceasefire plan.
Elaborating, the commander said, "We had a few different scenarios. One was that maybe he was [mistakenly] buried with Gazans in October 2023. We needed to figure out where in eastern Gaza City: which locations needed to be identified and studied," which the hostage center accomplished with help from Shin Bet interrogations.
Intel official: 'I didn't think we would get all of the hostages back'
The intelligence official acknowledged that, "I didn't think we would get all of the hostages back," and that bringing back Gvili, the last hostage, was a testament to the amazing work of over 2,000 personnel who worked at the hostage center over the course of the war.
Next, the IDF official did not want to analyze how internal Israeli politics or foreign diplomatic factors might have delayed earlier potential opportunities to bring Gvili's body back.
But the hostage intelligence affairs commander did say that the operation had been huge and complex, and that the military always needed to weigh the costs and risks of such an operation against the likelihood/unlikelihood of success.
He said that around a month ago more information was received and then days before the operation even more, which substantially increased the likelihood of success.
Another new detail, the intelligence official added about the Gvili episode, was that the Islamic Jihad official whom the Shin Bet interrogated to get the latest information was not the person who originally transported Gvili's body into Gaza on a motorcycle, but a different official who was later given the body.
Regarding the Mossad, the IDF intelligence official said that while most of its involvement was in negotiations, it had some involvement in operations as well.
Commenting on some unique intelligence challenges, the senior IDF intelligence official said that the methods of research and operations used for following and rescuing live hostages were completely different than those for deceased hostage remains, requiring separate units for special expertise.
For example, living hostages were moved much more often, and the risk of them being killed by their guards was an additional, highly complex factor.
This was one of the reasons that dozens of deceased hostages were brought back in IDF operations, but less than 10 live hostages were brought back by IDF rescues, the IDF commander said.
In a noteworthy reveal, the IDF official stated that Gaza City guards moved their hostages around much more usually than hostage guards did in other parts of Gaza, though hostages were also moved in other parts.
While generally the IDF intelligence commander viewed the hostage center as highly successful, he discussed failures as well.
There was a failed operation to try to rescue Saar Baruch.
He also said that there were many operations for which significant investment went into training and preparing for, but which were called off due to changing circumstances or intelligence.
Moreover, he stated that some operations played out fully, but when the IDF arrived at a given location, it learned that the intelligence had been wrong and there was no hostage present.
After the December 2023 incident where IDF soldiers mistakenly killed three hostages, the hostage center carried out a significant refining process for training for soldiers in Gaza regarding how to act in different scenarios with potential hostages.
After the August 2024 incident where Hamas killed six Israeli hostages because the IDF was operating nearby, the IDF raised its standards to prohibit operating in places unless it not only had older intelligence about whether hostages were being held in the area, unless there was more updated intelligence on the issue.
Over the course of the first two weeks of the war, the IDF succeeded in reducing uncertainty about the fate of 3,000 Israelis to around 200-300, and by December 2024 the IDF knew definitively the status of all missing persons.