Inside Hamas’ ‘Shadow Unit’: The Force Behind Hostage Protection

Al-Qassam Brigades fighters before handing over an Israeli captive to the Red Cross in Gaza on Saturday. (EPA)
Al-Qassam Brigades fighters before handing over an Israeli captive to the Red Cross in Gaza on Saturday. (EPA)
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Inside Hamas’ ‘Shadow Unit’: The Force Behind Hostage Protection

Al-Qassam Brigades fighters before handing over an Israeli captive to the Red Cross in Gaza on Saturday. (EPA)
Al-Qassam Brigades fighters before handing over an Israeli captive to the Red Cross in Gaza on Saturday. (EPA)

Hamas’ armed wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, relied on its secretive “Shadow Unit” to keep Israeli hostages alive for nearly 15 months of war across Gaza, making it a crucial element in the Palestinian group’s operations.

Despite Israel’s ground forces advancing into every part of Gaza, backed by relentless air and artillery strikes, they failed to achieve one of the war’s key objectives—recovering hostages alive.

Most of those retrieved were bodies, with only a handful—no more than seven—rescued alive.

The “Shadow Unit” played a pivotal role in constantly moving captives from one location to another, thwarting Israeli efforts to locate them.

The public appearance of the Shadow Unit during the handover of Israeli hostages has raised questions about how the group managed to hold such a large number of captives for 15 months, despite intense Israeli military operations throughout the war.

The Shadow Unit was officially formed in 2006, shortly after the Al-Qassam Brigades and other factions captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. However, its existence remained undisclosed until 2016—five years after Shalit was freed in a prisoner exchange in 2011—when Al-Qassam released previously unseen footage of him in captivity.

Hamas sources told Asharq Al-Awsat that the unit was established around three months after Shalit’s abduction, following a series of Israeli airstrikes targeting locations where he had been held, both shortly after his capture and at later stages.

The Shadow Unit was initially composed of highly skilled operatives with extensive security and military expertise tasked with safeguarding Shalit, they added.

Over time, more members were recruited, including operatives from Al-Qassam Brigades' intelligence unit, the elite force, and other combat divisions.

The recruits underwent specialized security, intelligence, military and technological training.

According to the sources, Hamas’ top military commander, Mohammed Deif, and his longtime associate Mohammed Al-Sinwar ordered the unit’s formation following Shalit’s abduction.

Many of its early members, including those assigned to guard Shalit, were from Khan Younis, Deif and Al-Sinwar’s hometown.

Among them were senior Al-Qassam field commanders Abdel Rahman Al-Mubasher, Khaled Abu Bakra, and Mohammed Dawoud, who were killed in separate incidents in 2013 and 2021.



Will Israel’s Interceptors Outlast Iran’s Missiles?

The Israeli Iron Dome air defense system fires to intercept missiles during an Iranian attack over Tel Aviv, Israel, early Wednesday, June 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
The Israeli Iron Dome air defense system fires to intercept missiles during an Iranian attack over Tel Aviv, Israel, early Wednesday, June 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
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Will Israel’s Interceptors Outlast Iran’s Missiles?

The Israeli Iron Dome air defense system fires to intercept missiles during an Iranian attack over Tel Aviv, Israel, early Wednesday, June 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
The Israeli Iron Dome air defense system fires to intercept missiles during an Iranian attack over Tel Aviv, Israel, early Wednesday, June 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

Israel has a world-leading missile interception system but its bank of interceptors is finite. Now, as the war drags on, Israel is firing interceptors faster than it can produce them.

On Thursday, The New York Times reporters spoke to current and former Israeli officials about the strengths and weaknesses of Israeli air defense.

Aside from a potentially game-changing US intervention that shapes the fate of Iran’s nuclear program, two factors will help decide the length of the Israel-Iran war: Israel’s reserve of missile interceptors and Iran’s stock of long-range missiles.

Since Iran started retaliating against Israel’s fire last week, Israel’s world-leading air defense system has intercepted most incoming Iranian ballistic missiles, giving the Israeli Air Force more time to strike Iran without incurring major losses at home.

But now, as the war drags on, Israel is firing interceptors faster than it can produce them. That has raised questions within the Israeli security establishment about whether the country will run low on air defense missiles before Iran uses up its ballistic arsenal, according to eight current and former officials.

Already, Israel’s military has had to conserve its use of interceptors and is giving greater priority to the defense of densely populated areas and strategic infrastructure, according to the officials. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak more freely.

Interceptors are “not grains of rice,” said Brig. Gen. Ran Kochav, who commanded Israel’s air defense system until 2021 and still serves in the military reserve. “The number is finite.”

“If a missile is supposed to hit refineries in Haifa, it’s clear that it’s more important to intercept that missile than one that will hit the Negev desert,” General Kochav said.

Conserving Israel’s interceptors is “a challenge,” he added. “We can make it, but it’s a challenge.”

Asked for comment on the limits of its interceptor arsenal, the Israeli military said in a brief statement that it “is prepared and ready to handle any scenario and is operating defensively and offensively to remove threats to Israeli civilians.”

No Israeli official would divulge the number of interceptors left at Israel’s disposal; the revelation of such a closely guarded secret could give Iran a military advantage.

The answer will affect Israel’s ability to sustain a long-term, attritional war. The nature of the war will partly be decided by whether Trump decides to join Israel in attacking Iran’s nuclear enrichment site at Fordo, in northern Iran, or whether Iran decides to give up its enrichment program to prevent such an intervention.

But the war’s endgame will also be shaped by how long both sides can sustain the damage to their economies, as well as the damage to national morale caused by a growing civilian death toll.

Israel relies on at least seven kinds of air defense. Most of them involve automated systems that use radar to detect incoming missiles and then provide officers with suggestions of how to intercept them.

Military officials have seconds to react to some short-range fire, but minutes to judge the response to long-range attacks. At times, the automated systems do not offer recommendations, leaving officers to make decisions on their own, General Kochav said.

The Arrow system intercepts long-range missiles at higher altitudes; the David’s Sling system intercepts them at lower altitudes; while the Iron Dome takes out shorter-range rockets, usually fired from Gaza, or the fragments of missiles already intercepted by other defense systems.

The United States has supplied at least two more defense systems, some of them fired from ships in the Mediterranean, and Israel is also trying out a new and relatively untested laser beam. Finally, fighter jets are deployed to shoot down slow-moving drones.

Some Israelis feel it is time to wrap up the war before Israel’s defenses are tested too severely.

At least 24 civilians have been killed by Iran’s strikes, and more than 800 have been injured. Some key infrastructure, including oil refineries in northern Israel, has been hit, along with civilian homes. A hospital in southern Israel was struck on Thursday morning.

Already high by Israeli standards, the death toll could rise sharply if the Israeli military is forced to limit its general use of interceptors in order to guarantee the long-term protection of a few strategic sites like the Dimona nuclear reactor in southern Israel or the military headquarters in Tel Aviv.

“Now that Israel has succeeded in striking most of its nuclear targets in Iran, Israel has a window of two or three days to declare the victory and end the war,” said Zohar Palti, a former senior officer in the Mossad, Israel’s spy agency.

“When planning how to defend Israel in future wars, no one envisaged a scenario in which we would be fighting on so many fronts and defending against so many rounds of ballistic missiles,” said Palti, who was for years involved in Israel’s defensive planning.

Others are confident that Israel will be able to solve the problem by destroying most of Iran’s missile launchers, preventing the Iranian military from using the stocks that it still has.

Iran has both fixed and mobile launchers, scattered across its territory, according to two Israeli officials. Some of its missiles are stored underground, where they are harder to destroy, while others are in aboveground caches, the officials said.

The Israeli military says it has destroyed more than a third of the launchers. Officials and experts say that has already limited the number of missiles that Iran can fire in a single attack.

US officials said Israel’s strikes against the launchers have decimated Iran’s ability to fire its missiles and hurt its ability to create large-scale barrages.

“The real issue is the number of launchers, more than the number of missiles,” said Asaf Cohen, a former Israeli commander who led the Iran department in Israel’s military intelligence directorate.

“The more of them that are hit, the harder it will be for them to launch barrages,” Cohen added. “If they realize they have a problem with launch capacity, they’ll shift to harassment: one or two missiles every so often, aimed at two different areas simultaneously.”

The New York Times