On July 9, 2026, I argued on these pages that Israel must compound the impact of its aerial campaigns by systematically decapitating terrorist command chains on the ground. The “Maduro Method” — a counterterrorism strategy based on snatching commanders, extracting intelligence on friendly soil, and prosecuting them — now has its definitive Gaza proof of concept.
On Sept. 1, 2026, Shin Bet operators successfully extracted Muein al Arabid, Hamas’s internal security chief, from Gaza City. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu exposed al Arabid’s exact record: concealing hostages, shielding senior cadres, and reconstituting the reign of terrorism led by Tehran’s “Gaza puppies.”
Hamas’s internal security apparatus aggressively hunts collaborators, manipulates hostage movements, and shields the group’s political-military core. Despite Israel’s campaign, over 2,000 of the original 5,000 Oct. 7 terrorists remain alive, anchoring an underground network that still controls vital ministries. Crucially, while Israeli airpower can systematically delete battalions, it cannot eliminate the human infrastructure hiding them. Until Jerusalem neutralizes these trenches directly, this operational vulnerability remains Israel’s primary strategic blind spot in Gaza.
Modern geostrategy hinges entirely on this operational distinction. Tehran’s forward-defense doctrine deliberately positions proxies under Israeli jets but beyond Israeli boots, a paradigm that dual-domain operations effectively shatter. Because Jerusalem’s pilots already dominate the skies, special operations snatch teams must now penetrate the innermost sanctuaries of terrorist leaders. Consequently, proxy commanders who once expected martyrdom posters would now face Israeli interrogation cells and legal dockets. Ultimately, holding a living security chief in the Negev severs the sanctuary-to-field loop tying Gaza’s tunnels to Doha’s luxury suites and Istanbul’s safe houses — forcing watching commanders in Beirut and Sanaa to finally price in targeted raids, not just airstrikes.
Historical precedent already validates this operational methodology. During Operation Goldenrod in September 1987, FBI agents lured Amal-Hezbollah hijacker Fawaz Younis off Cyprus, arrested him, and extracted critical intelligence under America’s then-new hostage-taking statutes. Though Younis explicitly implicated sitting Lebanese Justice Minister Nabih Berri in the 1985 Royal Jordanian hijacking, Washington inexplicably laundered Berri as a legitimate statesman. Decades later, Berri remains Lebanon’s parliament speaker and Hezbollah’s chief political consigliere, weaponizing the Western fiction of his moderation to throw the terrorist group a lifeline after Hassan Nasrallah’s elimination. In retrospect, while a missile would have merely granted Berri a funeral, Washington’s failure to prosecute him handed Hezbollah a permanent international diplomatic shield.
The Jewish state must now establish tactical capture as the primary baseline multiplier for absolute victory. Because flattening empty, defunct tunnels offers zero battlefield utility, leveraging the localized intelligence of captured cadres such as Muein al Arabid remains the only viable means of mapping Hamas’s surviving subterranean network. By using al Arabid’s seized ledgers to identify operational dead ends, the Israeli military can systematically seal off useless decoys and force remaining operatives into active transit shafts. Simply put, while a bomb dropped on a decoy yields nothing but rubble, a live extraction yields the next actionable high-value target.
IF FOREIGN INSPECTORS ARE WRONG, JEWS DIE. ISRAEL HOLDS THE FINAL SAY
Indeed, this type of intelligence requires a living captive (especially since Israel’s 2005 exit from Gaza created massive HUMINT deficits compared to its coverage in the West Bank), meaning Jerusalem must treat Gaza as an operational exception rather than an endless legal theater. Under Israel’s 2026 death penalty legislation, an expedited 14-day military window should be weaponized to break a detainee’s initial resolve. If a target stalls, immediate transfer to maximum-security isolation under the threat of a looming death penalty docket compels cooperation. By exploiting Hamas’s own meticulous archives on 10,000 Gazan families, interrogators can map handlers, financiers, and networks before executing the final sentence.
Washington theorists treat counterterrorism as a problem to manage; however, we all know that half-measures in the Middle East invite slaughter. Israel must become smarter, or the United States will inevitably inherit the devastating fallout.
Jose Lev Alvarez is an American–Israeli scholar specializing in international security policy. A multilingual veteran of the IDF special forces and the U.S. Army, he holds three master’s degrees and is completing a Ph.D. in Intelligence and Global Security in the Washington, D.C., area.