Twenty years after Gilad Shalit was kidnapped by a militant cell that entered from the Gaza Strip through a tunnel, the IDF Archive at the Defense Ministry released the operational logs from the day of the abduction for the first time on Thursday morning. The handwritten records capture, in real time, the moment commanders began understanding that an Israeli soldier had been taken, along with the uncertainty and operational effort to determine what had happened and locate him.
According to the logs, the first entry at 05:13 reported numerous explosions in the Kerem Shalom area, initially believed to be impacts. One minute later, the words “there are casualties” appear. The logs then record the deployment of forces and reports identifying militants who had infiltrated the area. At 06:40, more than an hour after the incident began, the first note says, “A soldier is missing from a tank.” Four minutes later, the code word “Hannibal” was entered.
At 07:12, a report noted that a vest and helmet had been found on the fence. At 08:00, the soldier was officially identified in writing as “the kidnapped soldier: Gilad Shalit.” By 09:52, the logs state that tracks of both the militants and the abducted soldier had been found inside the area. At 13:38, the records say the kidnapped soldier’s vest was found with the tracker officer and had blood and shrapnel on it.
Soon afterward, officials reported that Shalit was alive but his whereabouts were unknown, adding, “He may not be in our area, the attack is by Hamas.” The logs also mention fears of a wider escalation and the possibility that he had already been taken farther north. Later, the army assessed the tunnel shaft used by the infiltrators, and at 17:38 a rumor was recorded that the kidnapped soldier had been moved through a tunnel to Egypt, though the reliability was unclear. Shalit, born on August 28, 1986, was abducted by Hamas militants on June 25, 2006, held in Gaza for five years and four months, a total of 1,941 days, and released on October 18, 2011 in a deal between Israel and Hamas.
