The 88th day of the war. Another day. I want to escape the house that closes in on me, I want to free the worried fingers that have formed into the mobile template - Telegram, Facebook, the official communication channels, and again, God forbid, in an endless loop. She was dying to exchange duties with the man in reserve duty who left Gaza and went north. He'll worry a little too. The public atmosphere, following the publication of the High Court decision at an unlikely time, is turbulent. In the network, reservists want to keep their mouths shut, if you don't have something unifying to say. I respect their call and shut up.
Then comes the invitation I've been waiting for a long time, for coverage inside the Strip. I say goodbye to the mountainous and tough landscape of Samaria, and slide into the western Negev that envelops me softly. Lush fields kiss a gray sky and the winter sun flickers among the trickles of rain.
We arranged to meet at the entrance to Bari at 10am. I arrive first, to begin the journey from within the underworld in Bari. In battered Sderot I was already there. In Bari Terem. There are soldiers at the gate who do not allow entry without the coordination and escort of kibbutz members. The heroic kibbutzniks want to return to life, and the promenade of visitors to the death neighborhoods does not help this.
Photo: Oren Ben Hakon
Outside in the muddy field, I stop a man on a small Mule tractor – Rani Kiniso, who agrees to give me a short mounted tour. His wife and children in Tel Aviv. He's here, a man of work who doesn't give up. With the Mule we move through the flowering garden with islands of ruins at its heart. Unfathomable. Indescribable. We stop by the home of the Haran family, a family I wrote about. Here Avshalom Haran was murdered and his wife Shoshan, his daughter Adi, his son-in-law Tal and his grandchildren Neve and Yahel were taken prisoner. The grandmother, mother and grandchildren were released. Tal remained in Gaza, along with 132 abductees. Nothing remained of the burnt house. The perforated safe room door and the detached handle attest to the horror. In the foyer under the pergola, among piles of charred tiles, potted pots of clay urns. In one, a single flower of pinkish geranium insists on blooming. The secret of our strength.
At the entrance to Bari you meet the Archimedes Force - a group of veteran reservists who transport and secure the 646th Brigade Commander. "The average age here is 44. We jumped into Bari on October 8 and we've been here ever since," says Major Itamar Cohen, commander of Archimedes (the last sentence was written at the request of the guys, to annoy the real commander who had just left for home, and Itamar is really just his lieutenant. I was happy to help). After a briefing, you board with a vest and helmet to the open Humvees. The calm and security that these battle foxes convey defeats fears and overcomes the echoes of explosions in the background. Near the perimeter fence, which still remains torn apart from the flood, mobile data is turned off and redeemed from the internal wars on the home front.
Ascend the white axis in the center of the Gaza Strip paved by the IDF, the so-called logistics route, or Netzarim corridor, which separates the northern and southern Gaza Strip. Descending from the axis south, winding along challenging dirt paths between plots of eggplant that were not picked until they rusted and fields of hot red peppers that rotted. South Red in Gaza style - fierce fire.
With the car you enter the yard of a large two-story house. Here is temporarily located the command post of the 646th Brigade Commander - the "Marom Fox Formation", or by its well-known nickname "The South". The brigade was established after the Yom Kippur War by veterans of the 101st under the command of the legendary fighter Shimon Kahner (Kacha). The big shoes of the best IDF commanders who have led the brigade over the years were entered in the middle of the last Sukkot holiday by Colonel Elad Shoshan, who grew up in the Paratroopers Patrol and even commanded it and the 101st Battalion.
"Bring carts"
As soon as we arrive at the compound, the peace of the fighters, sitting on coffee and Bamba among the olive trees, is disturbed, with a call on the radio. We get a report of a large explosion and wounded two kilometers northwest of us. We are waiting for another update, and at the same time preparing for the exit and the gate opens. Within a few minutes a sedative siren arrives - the event is under control. A fighter was burned while a team of fighters destroyed a laboratory for making long-range missiles. The lightly wounded man was evacuated and the mission was completed.
Elad Shoshan descends from the roof overlooking the space, and we sit down in the dusty kitchen. He is 42 years old, a career servant, father of four, "married to Inbal, who is also a military woman with the rank of lieutenant colonel, who serves as head of the ground forces' perceptions branch," he says. "Inbal goes out in the mornings and comes back at night. During the day the children are with their grandmother and aunts."
Col. Elad Shoshan, 646th Brigade Commander, Photo: Oren Ben Hakon
He grew up in Moshav Yated near Gaza, she grew up in Kibbutz Galon north of Kiryat Gat. The moshavnik and the kibbutz overcame the gaps and made their home extensively in Kibbutz Galon. They have four children - the youngest, Ray, celebrated his birthday one year away from his fighting father. During the three months of the war, Shoshan was at home only once. So far, he has only seen Ray's first steps in a moving video they sent him. In parallel with his impressive military career, he completed a bachelor's degree in mathematics and an MBA.
"My official day on the job with introductions and opening talks was supposed to be on October 8," he says, a slight smile on his face. Instead of official acquaintance, he underwent a baptism of fire. On the afternoon of Black Saturday, when he realized that the IDF was unable to control the incident, he jumped out of his house and jumped the brigade's battalion, 24 hours before they were given an official Order 8. "We weren't waiting for everyone. Whoever arrived, arrived. We equipped, boarded the Humvees and teamed up with Barak (Brigadier General Barak Hiram) in Bari. We got there on Saturday afternoon with close to 100 fighters. We went in for searches, and the main task was to evacuate families from their homes. There were clashes and we had to bring in two tanks to repel the terrorists. On Saturday night, I was given a mission to scan the road between Sa'ed Junction and Re'im and look for civilians among the burned vehicles. They said there was some kind of party there. They didn't know anything yet."
Before setting off, Shoshan consulted with another commander who scanned the southern part of the road. Shoshan asked whether to scan the area on foot or mounted. The answer he received was: "Bring carts." "What does carts have to do with it?" he asked. "How are you going to collect all the bodies?" he replied. "How many bodies are there already?" Shoshan continued to ask. "I collected 120," the commander replied.
Documentation from the attack in which Mamdouh Lulu was killed | IDF Spokesperson
Shoshan testifies, with a whisper in his eyes, that "that's when the token fell and I began to understand the magnitude of the event. At this point in Bari we saw isolated bodies. I went into Kibbutz Sa'ed and took two wagons from civilians that we connected to the Hummers. We reached diversity. We didn't find anyone alive. We loaded dozens of bodies onto the wagons. On Monday morning, we were called back to Bari to remove bodies from there as well, and in the process we again encountered terrorists hiding in attics. On Tuesday we were called upon for a particularly dubious task - removing the bodies of terrorists from Bari and the nearby grove. In total, we exhumed 104 bodies of terrorists."
During Shabbat he was in contact with his mother, who had barricaded herself in the safe room in her home in Beited. "My father died. My mother was alone. I understood that the alert squad had managed to stop the terrorists at the entrance to the moshav. I asked my mother not to leave the safe room. The power went out, and she sent a message that the battery was running out and wrote a few words that looked like parting words. Then there was a report of another terrorist infiltration into the peg. My sister called hysterically. I asked a friend to come knock on her house. She didn't answer. He knocked on the window, 'Tzipi Tzipi,' and there was no answer. I asked him to check if the car was parked. The vehicle was not there. At that moment, my heart dropped."
After hours of being out of touch, the mother was able to charge her cell phone and let her children know she was well. "She was evacuated to Eilat, where she continues her work as a teacher in the evacuated hotels. In between, she jumps a lot to visit her grandchildren."
"I knew the trip was over"
After three days in the envelope, the brigade spent a month of training in the army. When the ground maneuver began, they were designated as a reserve force to the north and did not enter with the first force. For three weeks they operated in Judea and Samaria and participated, among other things, in a large and prolonged offensive operation in the Jenin refugee camp. A month ago, they entered the Gaza Strip and assumed responsibility for the Netzarim corridor, which stretches from the border in the east to the sea, and includes an area north of the route and an area south of the axis, up to the Gaza River. To explain the geography, Shoshan draws a map of the strip with his finger on dust. Beyond securing the axis, which suffered fatalities from an anti-tank missile, the mission of the 646th Brigade is to destroy the enemy and its infrastructure above ground and in the depths of the earth.
Photo: Oren Ben Hakon
"We are mainly concerned that there will be no tunnels connecting the north and south under the logistics route and also under the Gaza River. Through these tunnels, terrorists and Hamas commanders fled from the northern Gaza Strip to the south. At this moment, two of my battalions are fighting and storming a new combat zone south of us."
There is a sense of shuffling in the public place.
"It's not shuffling – it's thorough work. There is no point in the maneuvering force rushing forward and occupying more territory without addressing the underground. Within a month, we certainly eliminated 80 Hamas terrorists in our sector, and apparently many more underground. We destroyed 40 shafts and tunnel routes. Each shaft destruction takes several days. You have to locate, understand the route, fight the terrorists if they leave, and then blow it up."
Among other things, in order to locate terrorists in the area at night, they used thermal drones donated to them by the American Friends of Judea and Samaria (AFJS).
How is the Air Force's assistance?
"Excellent. Every time I asked for help, I got it. It must be understood that if Hamas is to be defeated, destroying buildings from the air is not enough. The terrorists are hiding in the ground, and the aerial bomb does not harm them. We need the infantry in order to locate the tunnels and eliminate the terrorists. For example, we found two tunnel openings, blew up the two shafts simultaneously, and ten terrorists escaped in the middle from a third shaft. After a battle, we eliminated them all."
The brigade commander was called aside for a moment. In the meantime, the guys send Y., the medic, to me. He is 32 years old, Haifa, a sixth-year medical student in Florence. In the regular army he was a soldier in the Yahalam. "I am new to the brigade. On 6 October, I flew with my father to Rwanda for a trip. We went on safari and woke up for a terrible morning. I told my father I was sorry but the trip was over." Within three days he arrived in Israel and drove straight to Sderot. His parent unit had already shut down personnel, but he didn't give up. "I contacted the brigade sergeant, who is a friend of mine, and he attached me as a medic to the Archimedes force."
Missing a school year?
"I don't know. Right now I'm here and I'm focused on the present. At the university, no one is enthusiastic about helping me, but there are several elements in Israel that are trying to help. A moment ago I was sitting in libraries in Italy with a glass of macchiato, and suddenly I am in the midst of a war. The phase change is amazing."
How is the connection between the fighters here?
"The clichés that we are all brothers here are one hundred percent true. We are busy with activity, and when we go out to talk, we try not to touch the open wounds of Israeli society. There's a variety here – I'm not in favor of catalogs. At the end of the day, everyone who is here are people who love the Land of Israel who came to give their part and do it with love. With a kippah, without a kippah, new and veteran immigrants, urbanites, kibbutzniks and settlers - each one here with an amazing and fascinating story. People left family and work. I'm not special. They sat me down here, so I'm sitting. But I, unlike most fighters, only have worried parents, I don't have a wife and children."
You can contact Guy Hochman and he will take care of it.
"When it comes, it will come," he smiles and continues: "For me, personally, it was harder on the way to the reserves with all the question marks and the fear that they wouldn't recruit me than in the reserves themselves. The entire Israeli society will be scarred by October 7, but I would like to believe that our presence and activity here will dampen the difficulty a bit. Everyone here wants to be here."
Among those who insist on fighting: H. from Kiryat Bialik, a former Oketz fighter who received an exemption from service after injuring his knees and undergoing six surgeries. He struggled to enlist, and along with him was drafted into the reserves by his private dog, Uba; A. Mariel, the principal of a school in the community of Adam, who entered Gaza three days after the circumcision for his sixth child - he pushes a note with a number into my hand so that when I leave I will call Ayala, the real fighter who remained at home with a month-old baby; G. from Moshav Nahora, the skilled Hummer driver of the Archimedes force, who thought about retiring from the reserves when his son enlisted, but reported and has been serving for three months at the same time as his son who is a fighter in the Yahalam.
Message from the Father
The brigade commander returns, and we set out on foot to the opposite neighborhood, which was built in advance as a stronghold for Hamas terrorists. "If you find a shaft, signal us," say the soldiers guarding us. This is not a joke, as evidenced by the vigilance in their eyes. It's pouring rain, and we walk for about ten minutes between trails and orchards with guns drawn. Welcome to the neighborhood of the resistors, or at least to what remains of it: mountains of concrete, crooked Brazilians and garbage. It used to be a grand neighborhood with 31 buildings, most of them expansive eight-story buildings. From the upper floors you could look out over Bari. Missiles were fired from these buildings dominating the area, forcing the IDF to deal with them. All the buildings – including the school, the clinic and the mosque in the center – contained weapons or tunnel shafts. The opening of a shaft can be seen in what was once the living room of a house on the ground floor of one of the buildings.
Photo: Oren Ben Hakon
"With us, every building needs a safe room in order to get a building permit, so in this neighborhood every building is required to have a shaft," explains Itamar, who left a wife, three children and a business behind. "There's not a single house where we haven't found photo albums of babies with weapons."
He noticed that I was horrified by every explosion, including a missile flying out of Zig, in the combat zone south of us, and sensitively stretched out earplugs. Before blowing up all the buildings, they mopped them all up in order to locate terrorists and tunnel shafts. During the search, the soldiers found a bicycle and scooter from Bari. In the schoolyard they build a mural with a map of Palestine between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and women, one of whom holds Kalashnikovs.
Girl with Bamba
In one of the buildings, 300 meters from us, Ohad Ashur and Eliasaf Shushan were killed on 23 December and eight fighters were wounded. Terrorists emerged from a shaft in a building that had allegedly already been scanned, climbed the stairs to the upper floors, and from there surprised the force. "Yesterday, before we blew up this building, we played the soldiers a recording that we received. I want to play for you too," Shoshan says, sneaking into a saucer in his eyes again.
"Hello to the beloved soldiers of the 646th Infantry Battalion. From the word of David, the father of an Assyrian sympathizer, the name will arise in his blood. He fell in battle. Fell like a lion. You need to continue this war to the end. I presented it on a silver platter for the country. You will fight. Take my revenge. Leave no trace of these terrorists. If not, this issue will not pass in silence. I trust you. I love you. Keep up the great work you're doing. I am behind you, and the entire nation of Israel stands behind you. Don't believe the media. Don't believe anyone. The people are united - there is no right and no left, no Druze and no Christians, we are all fighting together. A Jew must take revenge. Just revenge. I want Sinwar's head, that's what I want. Rise and succeed. Thank you. I thank you from the bottom of my heart."
"The reservists fought here amazingly, and even when there were casualties, they charged and continued until we completed the mission," Shoshan says. "People here left everything because they understood the magnitude of the hour. As an army, we failed on 7.10, and everyone felt it in their blood. My message is that there is someone to rely on, that we are today's generation of the Maccabees. The IDF is doing an excellent job, and I think the civilians can already return south. Personally, I feel confident that my mother will return to Yated, which is on the 4km border. We will fight until we return the hostages and captives, but in my estimation, we will see the final victory picture of the collapse of Hamas only in about a year. If we fight for a week, we will get a year of quiet; If we fight for a month, as in Operation Protective Edge, then there will be four years of quiet. And if we fight for a year, maybe there will be long years of quiet here. This should be a fundamental war. I was a commander of 18-year-old regular fighters, here almost all of them are fathers who understand that they are fighting for the security of the next generation."
I've been inside for half a day and haven't seen a living soul, except for the fighters. Have you encountered a civilian population?
"There is a population in other areas that is still fleeing south. Two weeks ago, a figure approached a building near the logistics route. According to the open-fire regulations, suspicious movement at 2 a.m. toward the forces justifies shooting. The soldier didn't shoot, because he noticed that the figure was as high as a dog walking next to it, and realized it was a child. It was a two-and-a-half-year-old girl, dehydrated, barefoot, injured and covered in feces. The soldiers treated her as if she were their daughter. They bandaged her, and gave her water, Bamba and cookies," Shoshan shows the pictures of the slightly less frightened girl with Bamba in hand. "We handed her over to the Red Cross. I think her father took her out of a shaft and told her to go to the soldiers. I was moved to see how the soldiers took care of her. That's the difference between us and them. What they did to our children just three months ago, and what we do. We are fighting for the sake of life after and for the security of our people. With them, it's the other way around – they shoot and kill their own people, and live only for the sake of killing. We, on the other hand, fight but remain human beings."
Before parting, I ask Shoshan to take me to his most difficult moment. He is silent and thinking, and I can already imagine a horrific picture of Barry running through his head. He answers quietly, without a drop of machismo, an answer that manages to stun me: "When all the brigades entered the ground maneuver and we were left out as a reserve."
Have you seen bodies in Bari, and this is the hardest moment?
"As a commander, I wanted to fulfill my mission. Fortunately, a month ago they brought us in too. The scenes in Bari were very difficult, but it is precisely because of them that we have to fight and insist on continuing the mission until the end."
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