A member of Hamas’s Nukhba Force reportedly climbed to a Khan Younis rooftop to die alone after a Shin Bet officer warned him an airstrike was coming, sparing his family. Gaza sources say the calls have been made at least five times, a choice the terrorists who slaughtered families on October 7 never offered their victims.
Israel’s Shin Bet security agency has been phoning Hamas terrorists in Gaza shortly before airstrikes and offering them a stark choice: separate from their families and die alone, or stay with them and put their relatives in the line of fire. The Saudi-owned, London-based newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat reported Thursday that the calls have been made at least five times in recent months. Most recently, a member of Hamas’s Nukhba Force climbed to a Khan Younis rooftop and was killed there, while his family was spared.
The phone rang shortly before the missile arrived. On the other end, according to a new report, was an officer of Israel’s Shin Bet security agency with a blunt message for a Hamas terrorist in Khan Younis: go up to the roof alone and die there, or stay inside with your family.
Mohammad Alyan al-Bayouk went up to the roof. He was killed there in an Israeli airstrike on Wednesday, October 28.
The account was published Thursday by the Saudi-owned, London-based Arabic newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, citing Palestinian sources familiar with the cases. According to the report, the Shin Bet has made such calls at least five times in recent months, offering Hamas operatives a choice between leaving their homes to be targeted alone or being struck together with their families. The Times of Israel noted that the claims could not be independently verified. Neither the Shin Bet nor the IDF commented on the report.
A relative told the newspaper that al-Bayouk’s aunt was seriously injured when she chased after him to stop him from going outside after the call. The IDF identified al-Bayouk on Friday as a member of Hamas’s Nukhba Force, the elite unit that led the October 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel.
The Jerusalem Post added further details from the Asharq Al-Awsat account. According to the report, al-Bayouk was on the roof of a shelter for displaced Gazans in Khan Younis when the call came, and the Shin Bet officer gave him a choice between having the entire shelter struck with his family inside or going up to the roof to be targeted alone. He was killed on the roof by a small projectile fired from an IDF drone. The newspaper said it interviewed several Gazans it described as “Palestinian faction activists,” along with their families, who all reported similar experiences.
A source told Asharq Al-Awsat that the calls were made to lower-level operatives with a connection to military activity, as opposed to senior commanders, who are struck with missiles and suicide drones. The security establishment has not publicly acknowledged the practice. The Jerusalem Post reported, however, that it understands the IDF and Shin Bet have carried out similar operations in the past, though the specific cases in the report could not be confirmed.
According to Asharq Al-Awsat, the operatives who received such calls generally complied and moved away from their relatives, World Israel News reported, making al-Bayouk’s decision part of a recurring pattern. The IDF and Shin Bet confirmed al-Bayouk’s death but did not confirm the phone call, and the Shin Bet has not said whether the calls reflect an official policy or how targets are chosen to receive them.
A week of strikes
Al-Bayouk was one of four Hamas operatives the IDF said it killed Wednesday in strikes across southern Gaza. The other three, Hammam Jaber al-Sayed Abu Labda, Mahmoud Abu Naameh and Mohammed Hamad Shariq Abu Sultan, were together in Rafah when they were hit.
On Thursday, an Israeli strike in central Gaza’s Nuseirat killed Ihab Jamil Abu Taqiya, a Hamas commander the IDF said was involved in holding hostages kidnapped on October 7. Among the captives held by his network were Emily Hand, Noa Argamani, Raya Rotem, Hila Rotem Shoshani, Ohad Ben Ami, Andrey Kozlov, Shlomi Ziv, Almog Meir Jan, Maxim Herkin, Yosef Haim Ohana, Segev Kalfon and Alex Lobanov. The same strike killed Ibrahim Gihad Muhammad Abu Oshaiba, whom the military identified as a Hamas platoon commander.
The IDF said all of the terrorists had been advancing attacks on Israeli troops and civilians and working to rebuild Hamas’s capabilities “in systematic violation of the ceasefire.” Israeli aircraft also destroyed two Hamas weapons depots in the Bureij camp and Gaza City, which the military said held RPGs, explosive devices, rockets, Kalashnikov rifles and grenades. The IDF said it warned civilians in the areas before those strikes.
The strikes come a year after a US-brokered ceasefire took effect in Gaza in October 2025. Israel now controls some 63% of the Strip behind the so-called Yellow Line. Hamas has refused to disarm under President Donald Trump’s peace plan, and Israel has refused to withdraw until it does. Earlier this month, Hamas reportedly told a UN official that it was prepared to carry out another October 7-style attack. Israel has stepped up its campaign to hunt down every terrorist who took part in the massacre.
Human shields and phone calls
Israeli officials say civilian deaths in Gaza are the direct result of Hamas’s strategy of embedding its fighters, commanders and weapons inside homes, schools, mosques and hospitals. The IDF has spent the war developing methods to reduce that toll, including phone calls, text messages and leaflets warning residents to evacuate, and the “knock on the roof,” a small munition fired at a building as a warning before the real strike.
If the Asharq Al-Awsat report is accurate, the Shin Bet has taken the practice a step further, placing the decision directly in the hands of the terrorist himself. The man who hid among his family is offered the chance to separate from them. Al-Bayouk accepted it, and his family survived the strike.
The contrast with the men he served could not be sharper. On October 7, Nukhba terrorists went house to house through the kibbutzim of the Gaza border, murdering parents in front of their children and burning entire families alive in their safe rooms. Some 1,200 people were murdered that day and 251 were dragged into Gaza as hostages. No one called ahead to offer the families of Be’eri or Nir Oz a choice.
A choice Hamas never offered
The report from Khan Younis describes a strange moment of war. An Israeli intelligence officer, speaking by phone to a member of the unit that slaughtered Israeli families in their beds, gave him the chance to protect his own family. It is a choice the Nukhba Force never offered a single child in the kibbutzim.
Al-Bayouk climbed to his roof and died alone. His aunt was hurt running after him, and the rest of his family lived. Israel’s enemies call its conduct in Gaza genocide. According to Gaza’s own sources, the Shin Bet is still picking up the phone to give Hamas terrorists the chance to keep their families out of the line of fire, and Hamas is still hiding behind them.
