Soldiers scarred by last Gaza battle know what comes next

It’s almost certain Israel will soon try its third ground invasion of Gaza in 15 years. The battle plans are secret, but veterans of previous wars admit there aren’t many ways to invade a strip of land 40km long and 11km wide.

Israeli troops and tanks gather in a field in southern Israel. Picture: AFP

One aspect of urban combat in Gaza is not like it is in the films: you do not kick in doors. You blow them up.

“You put rockets in through the sides of houses or the walls or you blow up the door,” said Benzi Sanders, a former soldier, speaking from his experience of the last war in the territory.

“You go in, weapons firing,” he said. “Everyone is supposed to have left.”

All that is supposed to wait for you, supposedly, is booby-traps and militants.

For Sanders, 32, there was no time to be afraid, as he blasted his way into the unknown. “You are trying to stay alert,” he said. “You are in confident survival mode but you don’t have fear because you don’t have time to reflect.”

Not everyone feels the same. “It was absolutely terrifying, to be very honest with you,” said Ben, a sharpshooter in a parachute regiment in the same war, speaking with the benefit of urbane hindsight from an office in London where he now works.

“The most dangerous period is entering. There are traps, Hamas knows you are coming, they can have a very good idea of the routes you coming in on. You are crossing on open ground, things are booby-trapped.”

An aerial shot of a school in the town of Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip. Picture: AFP/Maxar Technologies

Israel has with near certainty decided that it will shortly attempt its third full-scale ground invasion of Gaza in 15 years. Yesterday troops were undergoing last-minute training on the battle plans that the Israel defence forces’ leadership has prepared. Those plans are secret. But as veterans of previous wars admit, there are not many ways to invade a strip of land 25 miles (40km) long and less than seven miles wide.

That means the hundreds of thousands of troops who have been called up can have some idea of what to expect. Some are doing it for a second time.

Aviv Haimson, 33, another paratrooper, spoke by videolink from a field somewhere near the Gaza border. He spent 16 days in 2014 sitting on a roof with a machinegun. His unit’s task had been to destroy Hamas’s tunnels, the main mission of that incursion. He was protecting the unit’s work from above, using all the sophisticated equipment available to the Israeli army.

It is a job that requires good judgment: any movement could be an enemy – but it could also be one of your comrades. Yet a moment’s hesitation can lead to disaster, as the buildings provide cover for both sides.

Sam Gosling’s comrades died instantly when he was in a similar position to Haimson, looking out over Gaza from a roof. “Hamas shot three anti-tank missiles at our building,” Gosling, 31, said. “The first one hit my commanding officer directly, killing him instantly … Two rockets hit the floor below us, where there were other soldiers. So I ran down, started first aid and my friends from my unit carried them to the evacuation point. And only at that point did I realise that I’d also been injured myself.”

A local citizen searches through buildings which were destroyed during Israeli air raids in the southern Gaza Strip, in Khan Yunis. Picture: Getty Images

The other great fear Israeli troops have is of being kidnapped. In 2014 this was a particular tactic Hamas deployed from hidden entrances to the tunnels.

Ben said his unit had discovered an entrance to a tunnel under a chicken coop. They had missed the second entrance, out of which Hamas fighters emerged and tried to drag away some of the Israelis. A gunfight ensued.

Not far from where Ben was serving in Khan Yunis a tunnel attack led to one of the most controversial incidents of that war: when a Hamas unit attacked an Israeli squad, killing two of its members and seizing a third, Lieutenant Hadar Goldin.

The Israeli authorities began a ferocious bombardment of the area, allegedly under the “Hannibal doctrine”, under which all means may be used to prevent the taking of Israeli hostages. It was claimed at the time that this barrage killed Goldin as well as Palestinian civilians – though it was subsequently said that he was already dead. His body has never been returned.

Now, troops have to live with the knowledge that if they are taken they will be joining more than 200 others, mostly civilians but dozens of them military.

The conflict in Ukraine has reintroduced us to the idea of old-fashioned war: tanks rolling down motorways, full-frontal assaults by companies across open countryside.

Michael Milshtein, a former IDF intelligence officer, said the forthcoming assault should rather be compared to the fight for Mosul in the war against Islamic State. That holds out the prospect of a battle many times larger and bloodier than the 2014 incursion. Israeli leaders are talking about it lasting for months.

The devastation in Mosul was total, and that is something which, in the case of Gaza, Israeli leaders will have to take into consideration as they face political opposition from around the world.

An Israeli soldier is positioned with troops at the border with Gaza. Picture: AFP

Even the more limited war in 2014 changed minds, including of those who took part. Sanders had moved to Israel from New York out of Zionist passion. He is now a peace activist, having joined Breaking the Silence, a group of veterans who campaign for an end to the occupation of Palestinian territories.

His moment of truth came during a particularly bloody moment of the 2014 war. His unit had helped to clear an area of Beit Hanoun, in the north of the Gaza Strip, but had been surprised to find a Palestinian family of eight still living there in the middle of the battle.

After a member of the unit was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade from elsewhere, the air force came and bombed the neighbourhood, destroying it and killing the family sheltering there.

War has many outcomes, perhaps most especially for the participants. Haimson survived without a scratch or even a serious near miss, he said. Sanders lost at least part of his faith in the cause he was serving. Gosling was injured and lost his commander but believes it was all worthwhile.

“We had almost nine years where Hamas hasn’t been able to cross the borders and attack civilians and a lot of that is due to the fact we went into Gaza and took out the tunnels,” he said. “It wasn’t for no reason it happened.”

The Times