Yahya Sinwar’s pistol with silencer and its link with Mossad’s 2018 failed operation

By Press TV Website Staff

On November 11, 2018, eight undercover Mossad agents disguised as Palestinians entered the besieged Gaza Strip to infiltrate communications of the Hamas resistance movement.

The key objective of the spy operation was to plant listening devices on the resistance movement’s private communications system, as media investigations later revealed.

As the Israeli regime agents made their way into Gaza, they were subjected to intense questioning by a Hamas patrol team for almost 40 minutes in the city of Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip.

The patrol team became suspicious of their responses, which triggered fierce clashes in which the Mossad operatives used pistols with silencers, killing Hamas commander Nour Baraka and his aide.

The head of the Mossad spy team, identified as Meni, was also killed in the clashes.

An investigation carried out by Al Jazeera two months later revealed that the agents were part of the Sayaret Matkal unit of Mossad which was formed in 1957 to collect intelligence of resistance groups.

After the spy operation was thwarted by the Al-Qassam Brigades, Israeli warplanes dropped bombs on the Khan Younis area to allow the rest of the team to escape back into the occupied territories.

“The operation itself failed, there’s no doubt about it,” Amir Oron, an Israeli military analyst, was quoted as saying by Al Jazeera at the time. “When you send someone [on a secret mission] you do not want the other side to know of it all.”

Investigations carried out by Hamas found the Mossad team used spyware and drilling equipment to enter Gaza under the cover of an international humanitarian organization called Humedica.

After the spy mission was aborted, Hamas seized the van in which the agents were traveling as well as their fake Palestinian identity cards with fake Muslim names.

One of the pistols that Yahya Sinwar, the newly-elected Hamas political bureau chief, has carried all these years is believed to be a booty from Mossad agents who escaped after the operation failed, leaving their weapons and equipment behind.

In a viral social media post, netizens said the al-Qassam Brigades had published photos of a number of Mossad personnel, in addition to photos of the vehicle and truck used by the Mossad personnel during the failed operation, on their website after the website.

Many weapons and other military equipment belonging to the Mossad agents were also seized.

In a speech on November 16, 2018, in eastern Khan Yunis, Sinwar welcomed on stage the commander of the Eastern Brigade of the Al-Qassam Brigades, who handed him a handgun.

“From us here in Gaza, [Israel] will never get anything but guns, fire, martyrdom, death, and killing,” he told the gathering, telling Arab leaders to welcome the Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu.

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