Watan-The Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, on Friday released video footage of a targeted attack on an undercover Israeli unit known as Mista’arvim in eastern Rafah, southern Gaza.
According to the video, Al-Qassam’s surveillance unit managed to track the Israeli special force, whose members were disguised in civilian clothing and receiving real-time instructions from uniformed Israeli soldiers, as they carried out a sweep operation near a residential building under cover from Israeli air support.
Mista’arvim are elite Israeli units trained to blend into Palestinian society, fluent in Arabic and local dialects, and sometimes include Arab Israelis such as Druze, according to Emad Abu Awad, a researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Israeli Studies.
The footage showed how the unit was monitored from multiple camera angles, with movements tracked as they searched a specific house. Al-Qassam fighters detonated a pre-planted explosive device inside the building during the sweep.
The video captured the moment of the blast, though Al-Qassam did not specify the number of casualties or the full extent of the damage.
Since the beginning of Israel’s ground invasion into Gaza, the occupation army has deployed undercover Mista’arvim forces in high-risk missions such as house raids, tunnel searches, and resistance detection, often in coordination with other combat engineering and special units, according to Al-Qassam.
This incident marks one of the few times such an operation against Mista’arvim has been documented. These units are known for extreme secrecy and tight coordination with Israeli special forces.
This development comes as Israel continues its U.S.-backed genocide in Gaza, ongoing since October 7, 2023, which has so far left over 177,000 Palestinians dead or wounded, mostly children and women, with more than 11,000 missing and hundreds of thousands displaced.
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