Palestinians living in Gaza’s Nuseirat camp, where four hostages were rescued in June, complained to CNN that they weren’t warned they were living in the same vicinity as hostages - putting them at risk of being caught in the crossfire, the site shared on Friday.
Several Palestinian terrorists and civilians were killed in the operation. The IDF placed the number of killed at 90, while Hamas claimed over 200 were killed. Noa Argamani (25), Almog Meir (21), Andrey Kozlov (27), and Shlomi Ziv (40) were all rescued during the operation.
Family doctor Dr. Ahmed Aljamal and his family held three of the rescued hostages.
“Had we known [the hostages were being held nearby], had he told us, we would have taken safety precautions, hide or move somewhere else,” one neighbor, Abu Muhammad El Tahrawi, told CNN.
Another neighbor, Abdelrahman El Tahrawi, expressed shock, describing the 74-year-old doctor as “a pious man.”
Tahrawi went on to describe the nature of the captor. “He leads the prayer, then he goes back to his home. He didn’t mix with people, didn’t complain about other people, and no one complained about him. He was a man who minded his own business.”
Despite Tahrawi’s description of Aljamal, other neighbors said the family was known for having ties to Hamas.
Aljamal’s 36-year-old son Abdallah, a journalist for the Palestine Chronicle, had been a spokesperson for Hamas’s Ministry of Labor.
The Palestine Chronicle is now being sued by former hostage Almog Meir.
Abdallah also openly supported Hamas on social media, posting pictures of his son dressed as a member of Hamas’s armed wing. He not only endorsed Hamas’s October 7 attack online but also reportedly commended the Hamas operation to kidnap Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2006.
“Since the start of the war, we have been waiting for this moment. We did not know how it would come and in what horrific way it would happen. Still, we were aware that it would inevitably come,” Abdallah’s sister reportedly wrote in a deleted Facebook post after IDF forces recovered the hostages and eliminated their captors.
The captors of Noa Argamani
Noa Argamani was held separately from the other three hostages, only 200 meters from the others, by the Abu Nar family.
A 16-year-old neighbor claimed that while his window faced the very apartment that Argamani was held in, just half a meter away, he never saw any indication that a hostage was being held there.
“[Israeli forces] pulled her out normally, and no one intervened, and there was no shooting at them,” the teenager said.
Unlike the captors of the previous family, CNN reported that people were reluctant to speak about the Abu Nar family.
“He had young children at home,” said Khalil Al-Kahlot, a civil servant in Gaza. “No one would expect him to hold a hostage like this, in homes and among people.”
Al-Kahlot, a family neighbor, said he never expected the family to be affiliated with Hamas—a sentiment shared by much of the neighborhood.
“They are people in Hamas, but we did not know that,” said another neighbor of the Abu Nar family. “If we had known there was something there, no one would have stayed in the area.”