TULKAREM - In a well-planned operation, 10 former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers rescued an American woman and her child who had been held captive in a Palestinian Authority-controlled area for three years.

According to a report on Army Radio, the woman met and married a Palestinian man in the United States.

He brought her to his home in a village near Tulkarem in northern Samaria (West Bank), where she and their young son lived with his first wife and four older children.

Here, she was beaten and threatened that if she left, she would never see her son again.

After failing to secure her release through the PA government, her parents contacted an American Jewish man who had served in an IDF combat unit.

He, in turn, got in touch with a number of his friends in Israel and together, they planned the rescue operation.

After weeks of gathering intelligence on the family's routine, the group succeeded in rescuing the woman and her son on Monday, according to a report on Army Radio.

Immediately after the rescue, she and her son were taken to the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem, where they were helped to board a flight home to America on Tuesday.

According to one member of the team named Giora, the IDF did not participate in the rescue, but the U.S. consulate followed the operation from beginning to end.

The family wanted to reward the men, but they said "we didn't do it for money."

Source: The Jerusalem Post