SDEROT, Israel – Israeli special forces entered the Gaza Strip late Friday night after drones spotted a number of dead Israeli civilians over the border, apparently killed after being abducted by Hamas fighters last week in the worst attack upon Israel in its history.
“We saw them from drones, they’d been killed by Hamas after they were abducted,” said an Israeli soldier from the 846th Sayeret elite reconnaissance unit which is preparing for a potential ground invasion of Gaza from farmland just a few miles from the border of the tiny coastal enclave controlled by Hamas.
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The task of entering Gaza itself was given to another special operations unit trained for infiltration, according to the soldiers, who spoke as 155mm self propelled howitzers periodically fired shells into Gaza City in the background.
The Sayeret unit – nicknamed “Samson’s Foxes” – will be the second group of soldiers to enter Gaza should the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) invade the strip in the next few days as is widely expected. Armoured bulldozers idling nearby manned by engineers will go first to clear mines and IEDs.
“We were in another field until last night,” said an IDF soldier from Ethiopia. “But Hamas found our position and fired rockets and mortars at us so we changed positions.”
The unit, a mix of armoured personnel carriers, a handful of tanks, and infantry, was neatly lined up, flying Israeli flags alongside an Ethiopian flag representing the large number of immigrants to Israel that compose a significant part of its professional army.
“We can move when they order us to move, we are ready,” said another soldier.
In contrast about a mile away in another field, a tank brigade was scattered across nearly a mile of land, it looks less organised than the Sayeret commandos that it will follow in the case of an invasion of the tiny patch of land that’s home to 2.3 million people and has been battered by over 6,000 Israeli air strikes in the past week, killing at least 2,200 people.
Israel has issued an evacuation order for 1.1 million people in northern Gaza, taken by many as a sign of an impending ground assault. The United Nations has said it is “impossible” for Palestinian civilians in Gaza City to evacuate in that timeframe “without devastating humanitarian consequences.” Israel has imposed what it calls a “total siege” upon the densely-populated Gaza, cutting off supplies of water, fuel, electricity and food. On Saturday there were reports of civilians being killed by an Israeli strike as they headed away from northern Gaza.
Israel sits on the brink of invading after last Saturday’s attack by Hamas and other Palestinian militants, which killed more than 1,300 Israelis in communities adjacent to the strip and saw at least 120 people taken hostage. The attack has shattered Israeli confidence in its own security in a nation that has long defined itself as a secure outpost surrounded by enemies.
“The military failed, the government failed and everyone was tricked by Hamas,” said an IDF officer. “The government [of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] promoted Hamas over the [West Bank-based] Palestinian Authority because they don’t want peace and if Hamas was powerful then there was an excuse: We can’t negotiate with terrorists. Hamas tricked them into thinking that they just wanted to rule Gaza and improve the economy.”
An Israeli security official, who is not authorised to talk to the press on the record, said that the government’s agreement to allow workers to leave Gaza for jobs in Israel was critical to the operation that, according to documents on some of the estimated militants who attacked Israeli cities, farms and military bases, had been planned since at least October 2022. Israel said 1,500 militants were killed in the attack.
“They were able to use people to collect intelligence about the outskirts of Gaza they normally couldn’t reach,” said the official. “Hamas was prepared with maps of key military bases, kibbutzim, towns and understood how few troops were actually on the border because the government had sent many units to the West Bank to protect settlements.”
The initial attacks were carefully targeted at the technology that Israel had come to rely on instead of soldiers: Observation cameras, remote operated machine guns were immediately hit, followed by attacks on key bases that specifically targeted the IDF’s ability to communicate and coordinate a response. And by completely compartmentalising the operation with only a handful of commanders aware of the large picture, Israeli’s vaunted domestic intelligence service, the Shin Bet, had little warning until just before the attack got underway.
“They turned our stupid reliance on technology against us,” said the security official. “War can only be fought by people because people can always defeat technology given enough time. And Hamas had nothing but time to prepare.”
That technology came into full view on Saturday morning in the border town of Sderot, which had been swarmed with hundreds of fighters armed with RPGs and automatic weapons killing scores in their homes and cars, as sirens blared and another round of the thousands of homemade rockets fired by Hamas in the last week targeted the town.
Mobile phones blare warnings and sirens fill the air, with such proximity – the northern part of Gaza can be seen from much of Sderot – that residents are given only 15 seconds to find shelter in one of the dozens of concrete bunkers that dot the town, a nearly impossible task that in some cases that often leaves soldiers, journalists, police and aid workers laying face down in culverts and behind walls.
The immediate response to the rocket fire comes from the anti-rocket system, Iron Dome, which tracks the rockets and intercepts them with rockets of their own, filling the sky over Sderot with white puff of smoke as missiles collide overhead. In one attack Saturday morning, the Iron Dome system intercepted all but one of the rockets, which hit Sderot without any casualties. Friday night involved a massive rocket attack on Tel Aviv, an hour’s drive north of Sderot, that was also intercepted. But the effectiveness of the Iron Dome system and technical surveillance of Gaza had lulled many Israelis into a sense of security that Hamas was contained.
“Iron Dome works but it made us lazy and complacent,” said the security official. “We treated Hamas as a nuisance when they were a much bigger threat than we realised.”
That threat could not be more clear walking the streets of the town a week after the attack: Virtually empty of residents – the only civilian VICE News found was an elderly man who appeared to have mental health issues walking the shattered town centre looking for cigarettes as all the shops were closed. His head bandaged from broken glass wounds during the attack, the man could only point at shot out store windows and mumble when asked what happened.
Cars shattered by gunfire, often with blood soaked seats are found on many blocks and in the centre of the town, three police officers carrying automatic weapons guard a large pile of rubble.
It was the police headquarters and was stormed by about 20 Hamas fighters, who took hostages that they executed as Israeli forces backed by tanks and bulldozers finally levelled the building in an all day battle.
“Can you smell the terrorist bodies,” asked a police officer. “There’s still many under the concrete, we have been too busy to clear it.”
When asked if the police were from Sderot or another part of the country, there was an uncomfortable silence before one police officer spoke.
“We are not from Sderot,” she said. “There are no more police from Sderot. Most are dead.”
