Occupation soldiers recount details of being targeted by “Al-Qassam” fighters

Israeli reserve soldiers spoke about how they used overwhelming firepower during their war on the Gaza Strip, turning many areas into rubble, according to the British newspaper The Guardian on Friday, February 9, 2024.

The soldiers were not authorized to speak to the media, so The Guardian conducted interviews with them on condition of anonymity. They described intense and direct fighting inside Hamas strongholds, such as the neighbourhoods of Shuja’iya and the Jabaliya refugee camp, mentioning fighting against an enemy they could only see for “a few split seconds.”

One sergeant said, “They don’t show themselves. You see the targets for a fraction of a second. It’s a bit surreal. You’re walking through this devastated, empty city. And you have all this destructive power – from attack helicopters and tanks and artillery you can call in – so you feel ultimate power. But at the same time, you feel very vulnerable.”

The soldiers also talked about the challenge of fighting in unfamiliar terrain well-known to Hamas operatives, giving them opportunities for surprise attacks despite Israel’s traditional military superiority and air power. Some soldiers reported not seeing any Palestinian civilians at all and spending weeks in Gaza without encountering anyone except small groups of Hamas fighters, while others said they engaged in almost daily direct battles.

One officer who was in Gaza for two months with an infantry unit said, “The scale of the destruction is staggering. And what struck me is that there is nowhere for anyone to return to. There aren’t even three walls standing together! It looks like a scene from a zombie attack or something. This isn’t a war zone. It’s a devastated area that looks like something out of a Hollywood movie.”

Many of the soldiers interviewed spent several days trying to find the tunnel network, which they described as much larger than Israeli military planners initially thought. One of them said, “I was supposed to map out the tunnels, but in the end, I focused on the main ones, marked their locations, and then we bombed everything we thought might be another tunnel within a kilometre radius.”

Another said the tunnels were “everywhere.” He added, “We tried all solutions to find them. We put cameras on wires, and we went in ourselves. And we would throw smoke bombs down below at one point and look for places where the smoke was coming out.”

The interviews indicate that the high civilian death toll was due to Israel’s use of overwhelming firepower to minimize its losses. A soldier from the Duvdevan special forces unit said his unit encountered Hamas fighters only three times in the six weeks they spent in northern Gaza.

When asked about the tactics used by the unit in such situations, the soldier laughed and said, “There are no tactics. We get shot at, we pinpoint the target. Then we spend an hour firing all our weapons, tanks, and anything else we can get our hands on. And then we move forward to find the dead.” Another soldier in the special forces said they advanced “in the right formation” during the early stages of the war. He explained, “We had everything we needed and in the right order. It starts with airstrikes and artillery, then tanks come in, and only then do infantry soldiers move forward. And there isn’t much left in the place by the time we get there.”

Another soldier described how a relatively minor injury to one of his fellow soldiers led to a “massive response,” saying, “We destroyed the entire area where we thought the shooter was simply.”

Tel Aviv estimates that there are about 136 Israeli captives in Gaza, while it holds at least 8,800 Palestinians in its prisons, according to official sources from both sides, but there is no confirmation of the final number by either side.

Since October 7, 2023, the Israeli occupation army has been waging a devastating war with American support on Gaza, resulting in “27,585 martyrs and 66,978 wounded, most of them children and women,” according to Palestinian authorities, causing “massive destruction and an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe,” according to the United Nations.