Gaza residents shocked to find Israeli hostages among them

CNN — (CNN) — The Aljamal family was well-respected in the Nuseirat camp in Gaza. They were known to be devout and prominent members of the community. If people knew they had ties to Hamas, neighbors say no one would have guessed how deep those ties ran.

When Israeli forces stormed the Aljamals’ building on June 8, they found Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov and Shlomi Ziv, hostages taken at the Nova music festival on October 7, cowering in a dark room.

The experiences of the three men, as well as that of Noa Argamani, who is being held in another nearby house owned by the Abu Nar family, echo the accounts of previously released hostages. They describe being confined among the civilian population, rather than in Hamas’s vast network of tunnels under Gaza.

In the aftermath of last month’s rescue, neighbors in Nuseirat, a refugee camp in central Gaza, told CNN they were shocked to learn that Ahmed Aljamal, a doctor, and his family had held hostages among them.

“If we had known, if he had told us, we would have taken security precautions, we would have hidden or we would have moved elsewhere,” said a neighbor, Abu Muhammad El Tahrawi.

Dr Aljamal, 74, was a GP and also led the call to prayer at the local mosque, rising early each day to arrive before dawn.

“He was a pious man,” said his neighbor Abdelrahman El Tahrawi. “He would lead the prayer and then go home. He didn’t mingle with people, didn’t complain about others and no one complained about him. He was a man who minded his own business.”

Dr Aljamal’s son, Abdallah, 36, was a freelance journalist who most recently wrote for the US-based Palestine Chronicle, for which he regularly reported on the war in Gaza.

Neighbors told CNN it was no secret that the family had ties to Hamas. “We were worried about the Aljamal house. They are with Hamas,” said a neighbor and acquaintance of the family.

Abdallah was most recently the spokesman for Gaza’s labor ministry, a position reserved for Hamas members, according to political analysts. He has also shown his support for the group on social media. On Facebook, he has posted photos of his young son dressed in the uniform of Hamas’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades, and openly praised the group’s attack on Israel on October 7. In a video posted in 2022, Abdallah praised Hamas’s operation to kidnap Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who was held in Gaza between 2006 and 2011, and proclaimed: “My brothers, we are all ready to die for the resistance.”

Public support for Hamas as a political movement in Gaza has fluctuated between 34 and 42 percent over the past seven months, according to polls by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Polling Research. Polling in Gaza faces many challenges, including population displacement, people’s reluctance to publicly criticize Hamas, and personal security risks during wartime. The true level of support for Hamas may be lower, according to Dr. Mkhaimar Abusada, an associate professor of political science at Al-Azhar University in Gaza who is now based in the Egyptian capital Cairo.

There may be other reasons why Hamas has chosen to house hostages in civilian homes.

Hussein Ibish, a senior fellow in residence at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, said the approach fits Hamas’ strategy to “bog Israel down in the urban centers of Gaza and push it into a counterinsurgency that cannot end, which is the perpetual war that Hamas says it wants.”

A higher proportion of Gazans support armed resistance more broadly, the poll suggests, despite more than nine months of war that has devastated the Gaza Strip.

Individuals not affiliated with Hamas or other Palestinian militant groups took part in the October 7 incursion into southern Israel, crossing the border fence after it was breached by fighters – some stealing from Israeli communities and others taking hostages to Gaza. At least 1,200 people were killed and some 250 people in total were taken from Israel to the Gaza Strip, according to Israeli authorities.

Last month, a senior Hamas official told CNN that the group did not know how many hostages were still alive, suggesting it may not have complete control over their whereabouts. Israeli opposition leader Benny Gantz told an Israeli television station that Israel knew with a “very precise number” how many hostages were still alive.

Despite the level of support in Gaza for Hamas, which has ruled the territory since 2007, far fewer people are believed to be accepted into the Islamist movement’s trusted circles.

Abusada said it was unlikely that hostages would be held by civilians under Hamas leadership unless they had strong ties to the group and enjoyed its trust.

“Creative Punishment”

The three hostages held in the Aljamal family’s apartment building were held there for about six months, according to Andrey Kozlov, who spoke to CNN last week.

Kozlov described the physical and psychological abuse he suffered at the hands of his guards. One in particular, he said, “was a big fan of creative punishments” who once forced him to spend two days on a mattress without moving or speaking as punishment for standing near an open window, and another time covered him with blankets in the summer heat for washing his hands with clean water.

“I was trying to breathe through the space between the mattress and the blankets,” he said.

Meanwhile, the hostages could hear the family, including the children, going about their daily business on the floor below, according to Aviram Meir, Almog Meir Jan’s uncle. In the weeks before the Israeli raid on the hostages, the Aljamal family had carried on as usual, at least on the surface, and Abdallah’s last article for the Palestine Chronicle was published the day before.

Then, on the morning of June 8, Israeli forces stormed Nuseirat.

Zainab Aljamal, Abdallah’s sister, who was in the family home at the time of the raid, wrote a Facebook post that day describing what happened. Israeli soldiers entered and first shot Abdallah’s wife Fatima before killing Ahmed and Abdallah, she wrote. Zainab hid with Abdallah’s children under a bed, according to the now-deleted Facebook post that was shared with CNN by independent open-source researcher Thomas Bordeaux.

Zainab said in her message that the family had been waiting for the moment when she would be killed by Israeli forces. “Since the beginning of the war, we have been waiting for this moment. We did not know how it would happen or in what horrible way it would happen, but we were aware that it would inevitably happen.”

As the three hostages were rescued from Aljamal’s home, about 200 meters (650 feet) away, Israeli forces carried out a simultaneous raid on a second apartment building – which Israeli officials said housed the Abu Nar family – to recover Argamani.

Argamani became one of the most high-profile Israeli hostages when widely circulated footage showed her being hoisted onto the back of a motorcycle and driven away from the Nova music festival on October 7 while her partner was grabbed and forced to walk with his hands behind his back.

Less is known about Argamani’s captors. Family members told Israeli media that she was being held by a relatively wealthy family who asked her to do dishes for the house, telling her she was lucky to be held by them while other hostages were in much worse situations.

In a video released by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) showing Argamani’s rescue, troops are seen inside an apartment on the upper floor of a building, passing a small kitchen.

The Israeli prime minister’s office told CNN she was being held by the Abu Nar family, but did not provide further details.

According to unofficial lists of those killed circulated in Arabic-language media and on social media, Mohamed Ahmad Abu Nar died alongside his wife and child during the Israeli operation Nuseirat last month. Three relatives of Abu Nar also announced on social media that he had been killed by Israeli forces that day.

CNN cannot independently confirm whether Abu Nar was involved in Argamani’s detention and his relatives did not respond to requests for comment.

“A normal man”

Neighbors of Abu Nar’s home in Nuseirat told CNN they saw Israeli special forces enter and exit the building without much fighting.

Bilal Mazhar, a 16-year-old student, said his window was opposite the window of the apartment where Argamani was being held, just half a meter away, but he never saw any sign of her presence until Israeli forces took her out.

“They took it out normally and no one intervened, and no one shot at them,” Mazhar said.

Mohamed Ahmad Abu Nar appears to have shared very little about his life online, and local residents were reluctant to share many details about the Abu Nar family, but they expressed surprise and concern that a hostage had been held among them.

“He had young children at home,” said Khalil Al-Kahlot, a Gaza civil servant. “Nobody expected him to hold a hostage like that, in houses and among people.”

Al-Kahlot, who told CNN he had been in Nuseirat for four months, said Mohamed Ahmed was “ordinary” and “a normal man,” adding that he never suspected he was affiliated with Hamas.

“They are Hamas people, but we didn’t 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.”

After Israeli forces evacuated the hostages, airstrikes hit both buildings from which they were rescued and now only rubble remains at each site.

According to Gaza’s health ministry, which does not distinguish between militants and civilians, more than 270 Palestinians were killed in Nuseirat on June 8 and hundreds more were wounded. Israel puts the death toll at fewer than 100. CNN cannot independently confirm these figures.

Many residents wondered why so many Palestinians had to die for Israeli forces to save only four hostages.

Al-Kahlot said: “People died because they were freeing her, and no one was looking at us.”

CNN is not identifying some of the people interviewed for its own safety.