A former British special forces soldier and friend of Prince Harry has flown to Israel to help evacuate people within 24 hours of Hamas attacking.
Dean Stott, who was a member of Britain's elite Special Boat Service, the special forces unit of the Royal Navy, was on the ground in Tel Aviv almost immediately helping after Jewish friends asked him to help.
Stott, 46, and his team are helping people anxious about the deteriorating situation get to Ben Gurion Airport or leave via Jordan.
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His wife, Alana, is masterminding the operation from their home in California and has set up a Spotfund for donations.
Two years ago, the husband-and wife-team helped evacuate people from Afghanistan and Stott evacuated the Canadian Embassy in Libya in 2014.
"We know how to do extractions. You need to get in fast because you don’t know if airspace is going to get shut down," Stott said from Jerusalem.
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"I saw it on the news and within 30 seconds we were getting calls from friends. We’d just got home from Disneyland. I was there in 24 hours and helping the first family.
"We’re getting them from kibbutzim and places all across the country. Alana finds the flights and I make sure they get on them. The older people especially need more help. There are lots of tourists trapped here.
"Flights keep getting cancelled and people don’t know what to do. We say just get a flight anywhere, Greece or Cyprus for instance. You never know if all flights are going to get cancelled when the ground invasion starts. Don’t wait until the situation changes. We’re also looking at chartering boats to Cyprus.
"Sometimes we use Ben Gurion and sometimes people can cross into Jordan. I’ve got good contacts with King Abdullah [of Jordan] because I met him filming there three months ago.
"I’m also identifying safe houses for if it gets worse and the airport closes. We used them in Afghanistan. We’ve still got people in safe houses in Afghanistan.
"The phones are blowing up with requests for help. We’ve never said no to a family, whether they can pay or not."
At one point Alana used her own credit card to help one family: "Their credit card wasn’t going through fast enough and I was worried the seat might go so I booked it for them," she said.
Dean Stott and his wife Alana attended Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's wedding in 2018 (Photo: Getty)
Stott, who appears in SAS: Who Dares Wins Australia, has been friends with Prince Harry since they while serving in the British Army and have remained friends, with both now living in California.
In 2018 he became the fastest person to cycle the length of South America, and he also achieved the world record for the fastest cycle journey of Pan American Highway.
