[3][4] Gary Spedding, a consultant on the Middle East, said that the activity of mista‘arvim "allows the Israeli military and border police to identify protesters they wish to arrest and detain.
Israeli affairs expert Antoine Shalhat claimed that the main missions of the mista‘arvim "include gathering intelligence and counterterrorist operations.
[3][5] A mista‘arvim unit, with the code-name ha-Shahar (The Dawn) was established secretly by the Palmach in 1943 and consisted mainly of native Arabic-speaking Sephardic Jews, virtually indistinguishable from Arabs generally.
With the outbreak of the 1948 independence War in November 1947, members of ha-Shahar were deployed as intelligence agents capable of penetrating Arab urban neighbourhoods and villages and, at times, in sabotage and assassinations.
It appears that subsequently, on 21 May, two mista‘arvim, David Mizrahi and Ezra Horin, operating out of Dorot and kibbutz Gevar‘am were captured by Egyptian troops as they attempted to poison with typhoid and diphtheria bacteria the wells from which Egyptian troops in Gaza drew their water supplies, an incident which led Egypt to make a formal protest to the Secretary General of the United Nations later that month.