Shadow Unit

The Shadow Unit is a secret unit of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing, responsible for guarding and concealing hostages held by the organization and for protecting their detention sites from intelligence and rescue operations. The unit was established in 2006, several months after the abduction of Gilad Shalit, at the initiative of senior figures in Hamas’s military wing, including Mohammed Deif and Mohammed Sinwar. In its early years, it was a small force comprising several dozen operatives whose primary mission was to guard Shalit. Following Operation Protective Edge, it was also assigned responsibility for holding the bodies of IDF soldiers Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul and for guarding Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed. The unit’s existence was kept secret for years, until Hamas publicly revealed it in January 2016 as part of the release of footage from Shalit’s period in captivity. According to reports about its activities, its members are selected, from Hamas’s Nukhba forces and military intelligence and undergo training in intelligence, concealment, surveillance detection, and languages. The unit operates under strict compartmentalization intended to limit the amount of information available to each cell and make it more difficult to locate the hostages and the places where they are being held. Following the October 7, 2023 attack, the unit was expanded in response to the large number of Israelis abducted to the Gaza Strip and, according to reports, grew to several hundred operatives. During the Israel–Hamas war, the unit was involved in guarding living hostages, transferring them between hiding places, and overseeing security procedures at locations where they were held. Its members also participated in transferring hostages to the International Committee of the Red Cross as part of release agreements. At events held in 2025, operatives attributed to the unit appeared publicly, including women. Organizationally, the Shadow Unit is intended to separate Hamas’s regular operational forces from the system responsible for holding captives and to preserve the organization’s ability to use them in negotiations. Because of its clandestine nature, there is no complete public information about the unit’s structure, chain of command, or number of personnel, and some of the available information about it is based on Hamas publications, sources within the organization, and assessments by Israeli security officials.