Twenty years after the abduction of Gilad Shalit, the Israel Defense Forces archive at the Defense Ministry has released the operation logs from the day he was taken. The records, written by the battalion headquarters duty officer, capture in real time how troops near the Gaza fence gradually understood that a soldier had been kidnapped during the opening hours of the 2006 World Cup in Germany.
The first entry appears at 05:13, noting multiple explosions in the Kerem Shalom area and assuming they were impacts. One minute later, the log already says, “There are casualties.” By 05:16, it orders attack helicopters to be scrambled, and at 05:19 it notes, “Soldiers at the fence. There are casualties.” Later entries describe an anti-tank missile fired at the tank, gunfire, a terrorist inside a tunnel, and reports of dead and wounded. At 06:40 the log records, “A soldier from the tank is missing,” followed at 06:44 and 06:48 by the word “Hannibal,” indicating the military’s effort to prevent capture.
By 07:46, trackers had found no signs of the missing soldier being dragged, but they did locate his body armor and helmet on the fence at position 225. At 08:00, the missing soldier was identified by name: “Gilad Shalit.” At 09:52, the logs note that both the terrorists’ and the abducted soldier’s tracks had been identified inside the area. By 13:38, investigators had found the soldier’s vest with blood and shrapnel, and later that day the command room moved to seal the area as a closed military zone while journalists arrived.
The article says Shalit was abducted alive and apparently uninjured, then taken to Rafah and later to various safe houses. The Red Cross was never allowed to visit him, though three letters from him were received, including one about three months after the abduction. A video was released exactly one year later showing him reading a Hamas-scripted text. In 2011, after a long campaign, the Netanyahu government agreed to release 1,017 Palestinian prisoners, including Yahya Sinwar and dozens of murderers and life-term prisoners, in exchange for Shalit. Israel subsequently hunted the kidnappers, killing or capturing several members of the cell over the following years.
