Gilad Shalit - Abduction

Abduction

Early on 25 June 2006, Palestinian militants from internationally branded terrorist organization Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Popular Resistance Committees, and Army of Islam infiltrated into Israel from the Gaza Strip through an underground tunnel near the Kerem Shalom border crossing. They then infiltrated and attacked an Israeli army post from the rear. Two of the Palestinian militants were killed, while two IDF soldiers were killed and three others wounded, aside from Shalit. Shalit suffered a broken left hand and a light shoulder wound, and the militants then abducted him.

Shalit's captors issued a statement the following day, offering information on Shalit if Israel were to agree to release all female Palestinian prisoners and all Palestinian prisoners under the age of 18. The statement was issued by the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the Popular Resistance Committees (which includes members of Fatah, Islamic Jihad, and Hamas), and a previously unknown group calling itself the Army of Islam.

On 14 June 2007, Israel Army Radio reported that the IDF had received a warning on 24 June 2006, the day before Shalit was abducted, about a planned abduction of an Israeli soldier. According to the report, Israeli security forces entered the Gaza Strip on 24 June 2006 and detained two brothers, described as Hamas members. The report said that the brothers were transferred to Israel for interrogation, and that the information extracted formed the basis for the warning that militants would try to enter Israel through tunnels to abduct soldiers stationed near Gaza.

Shalit was the first Israeli soldier abducted by Palestinians since Nachshon Wachsman, in 1994. His abduction and the following cross-border raid by Hezbollah, resulting in the abduction of IDF soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev into Lebanon, occurred prior to the conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon during summer 2006.

The high-ranking Hamas commander whom Israel considers responsible for masterminding Shalit's abduction, Abu Jibril Shimali, was killed during the violent clashes between Hamas and the al-Qaida-affiliated Jund Ansar Allah organization in Gaza in August 2009.