Reporter's notebook2 battalions have lost 3 company commanders in urban combat

As Hamas tries to regroup in north Gaza, IDF forces are determined to root it out

Two days before Tzabar Battalion lost officers in a booby-trapped house, The Times of Israel took a trip to the battlefield, where a ceasefire was not on anyone’s mind

Lazar Berman

Lazar Berman is The Times of Israel's diplomatic reporter

  • A dog lounges in front of an IDF tank in the central Gaza Strip, February 20, 2024 (Lazar Berman/The Times of Israel)
    A dog lounges in front of an IDF tank in the central Gaza Strip, February 20, 2024 (Lazar Berman/The Times of Israel)
  • An elmo doll adorns a hummer belonging to Battalion 931 in the central Gaza Strip, February 20, 2024 (Lazar Berman/The Times of Israel)
    An elmo doll adorns a hummer belonging to Battalion 931 in the central Gaza Strip, February 20, 2024 (Lazar Berman/The Times of Israel)
  • Vehicles belonging to Battalion 931 in the central Gaza Strip, February 20, 2024 (Lazar Berman/The Times of Israel)
    Vehicles belonging to Battalion 931 in the central Gaza Strip, February 20, 2024 (Lazar Berman/The Times of Israel)
  • Officers from the Tzabar Battalion move through a house in the central Gaza Strip, February 25, 2024 (Lazar Berman/The Times of Israel)
    Officers from the Tzabar Battalion move through a house in the central Gaza Strip, February 25, 2024 (Lazar Berman/The Times of Israel)
  • Soldiers from the Tzabar Battalion in the central Gaza Strip, February 25, 2024 (Lazar Berman/The Times of Israel)
    Soldiers from the Tzabar Battalion in the central Gaza Strip, February 25, 2024 (Lazar Berman/The Times of Israel)
  • Soldiers from the Tzabar Battalion in the central Gaza Strip, February 25, 2024 (Lazar Berman/The Times of Israel)
    Soldiers from the Tzabar Battalion in the central Gaza Strip, February 25, 2024 (Lazar Berman/The Times of Israel)
  • Soldiers from the Tzabar Battalion operate in the central Gaza Strip, February 25, 2024 (Lazar Berman/Times of Israel)
    Soldiers from the Tzabar Battalion operate in the central Gaza Strip, February 25, 2024 (Lazar Berman/Times of Israel)

ZEITOUN, GAZA CITY — Less than 48 hours before he lost two of his officers and saw seven more men seriously wounded in a deadly incident in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood, Lt. Col. Aviran Alfasi, commander of the Givati Brigade’s Tzabar Battalion, laid out the threat posed by Hamas there.

“There is resistance, but it’s not like it was at the beginning,” Alfasi, 34, told The Times of Israel from his command post set up in an upscale Zeitoun home. “They shoot and run away.”

“The battle is way less complex than it was,” he said.

The Tzabar Battalion, part of the Givati Brigade, but currently attached to the Nahal Brigade, is involved in a weeklong offensive in Zeitoun, attacking north from the Netzarim corridor that splits the Strip in two, from Kibbutz Nahal Oz in Israel to the Gaza coast.

While his battalion has freedom of action in Zeitoun, “there is still more work,” said Alfasi.

“The more we and Nahal operate, the more [Hamas’s] capabilities continue to decrease,” he said. The mission includes “clearing the terrorists, the tunnels, expanding the corridor.”

On Tuesday morning, soldiers from Alfasi’s battalion were hit by a bomb in a booby-trapped building in Zeitoun. Company commander Maj. Iftah Shahar, 25, and platoon commander Cpt. Itai Seif, 24, were killed.

This composite image shows Maj. Iftah Shahar (R) and Cpt. Itai Seif of the Givati Brigade’s Tzabar battalion, who were killed fighting in the Gaza Strip on February 27, 2024. (Israel Defense Forces)

Alfasi’s battalion has lost others in the war, including a platoon commander on October 7.

On October 31, another 11 soldiers from Tzabar were killed when a Namer armored personnel carrier they were in was hit by an anti-tank guided missile fired by Hamas.

Despite the losses, Alfasi and his soldiers appeared in control and upbeat on Sunday.

“Our motivation is not because we are thirsty for war,” said Alfasi. “I’ve had soldiers wounded and I’ve had soldiers killed. The price of war — we’re paying it.”

Lt. Col. Aviran Alfasi, commander of the Tzabar Battalion, in the central Gaza Strip, February 25, 2024. (Lazar Berman/Times of Israel)

“[My soldiers] understand the mission, they understand the responsibility,” he declared. “They are not tired.”

The Tzabar Battalion’s mission for the last month has been to destroy the infrastructure and eliminate the fighters of Hamas’s Zeitoun battalion, while expanding the security zone around the Netzarim corridor.

The means available to troops have improved since elements of the battalion joined the fight in Kfar Aza on October 7, fighting Hamas terrorists who had invaded the kibbutz in house-to-house combat. Almost every platoon has a drone that can enter homes ahead of troops, and there are more search dogs than ever before, Alfasi said.

IDF paratroopers conquered Zeitoun in November and December, but Hamas terrorists remain in various hiding places, as does infrastructure.

Earlier this month, residents said that Hamas had begun to resurface in areas where Israel had withdrawn the bulk of its forces, deploying police officers and making partial salary payments to some of its civil servants in Gaza City.

“We see attempts [by Hamas] to come back,” Alfasi said. “It’s not too organized. When it happens, we foil it.”

“Now we are looking for every tunnel shaft, every rocket launcher,” he said.

The battalion is continuing to find significant tunnels, some right by houses the terror operatives are using as fighting positions.

The Tzabar soldiers have developed “a sense of smell” over the course of the war in sniffing out boobytrapped homes and terrorist hideouts, said Alfasi. Unfortunately, that sense is not always reliable, as evidenced by Tuesday’s tragic incident.

Alfasi lead the way on a short walk over muddy ground, churned up by constant movement of tanks and APCs heading to tunnels found the night before. Black smoke rises behind scattered two- and three-story homes nearby, almost all showing significant damage.

In newly excavated earth, two tunnels meet only meters below the surface.

“You can see that a network was created here that enables fighting — complex fighting,” said Alfasi. “You can also see that we know how to get to it.”

He would not expand on what the IDF found in this particular tunnel complex, only saying, “We know that they put whatever is valuable to them underground.”

‘Here to destroy Hamas’

A few hundred meters to the south of Alfasi’s forces, Nahal’s Battalion 931 holds on to the eastern part of the Netzarim corridor.

That battalion has fought in many of the most dangerous battles in northern Gaza, including in the Al-Atatra neighborhood of Beit Lahiya, the Shati camp, Jabaliya and the Al-Tuffah neighborhood in Gaza City.

It has lost seven soldiers in the fighting, including four officers. Two were company commanders.

Troops of the Nahal Infantry Brigade’s 931st Battalion battle Hamas operatives in northern Gaza’s Jabaliya, in a handout image published December 9, 2023. (Israel Defense Forces)

Battalion 931 killed eight Hamas operatives over the past week.

During a separate visit last week, Lt. Col. Oz Meshulam, battalion commander, told The Times of Israel: “They are still there, some very close to us.”

He said there was no substitute for the infantry’s work in the neighborhoods.

“We need boots on the ground to destroy Hamas,” he said.

Meshulam, 35, said the task is made infinitely more complex by the cooperation of many regular Gazans with Hamas.

Lt. Col. Oz Meshulam, commander of Battalion 931, and Maj. Tal Klichovsky, deputy commander of the battalion, in the central Gaza Strip, February 20, 2024 (Lazar Berman/Times of Israel)

He said over 80% of the 1,000 homes they have searched contained weapons.

“Everything we do we are doing carefully in order to kill terrorists,” Meshulam continued, “in an attempt to not harm anyone innocent — not a baby, or a woman, or anything. And we deal with that daily.

“On the other hand, when you see that they hid weapons in every house we took, you understand that Hamas is inside the population. It lives with them, it breathes with them. They allow it to build this infrastructure. Some civilians are afraid [of Hamas], some identify with them.”

Vehicles belonging to Battalion 931 in the central Gaza Strip, February 20, 2024 (Lazar Berman/The Times of Israel)

The troops found weapons in every school they searched, he said, and especially in UN and UNRWA facilities.

“There were more shafts, more weapons, more fighting posts,” said Meshulam. “There is no chance [the UN] didn’t know.”

In early December, the troops killed 11 terrorists fighting from inside a school in Jabaliya, and arrested over 100 more, including some who participated in the October 7 massacre in Israel.

Thousands of civilians also holed up in the school were sent to the southern Gaza Strip, said Meshulam.

He said his Hamas repeatedly put civilians in harm’s way.

The battalion witnessed one Hamas gunman holding a baby in one arm and a weapon in the other, he said. It has faced “humanitarian ambushes” — gunfire from within crowds receiving food and medicine.

Palestinians wait for humanitarian aid on a beachfront in Gaza City, Gaza Strip, February 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Essa)

At the school and at other sites, the Nahal soldiers have had interactions with uprooted Gazans.

“You see very tired faces from the situation,” said Meshulam. “With some of the people you talk to, they’re happy you came in order to throw Hamas off them.”

Some told the soldiers that they hate Hamas, and that they had been waiting for the IDF to arrive. Certainly, such comments to armed soldiers cannot necessarily be taken at face value.

“There are those you believe and those you don’t,” he noted. “But I don’t have to believe or not. I’m a commander in the army and I have my work to do.”

Like Alfasi to the north, Meshulam has also seen attempts by Hamas to reconstitute itself.

Soldiers from Battalion 931 in the central Gaza Strip, February 20, 2024 (Lazar Berman/Times of Israel)

“I’m sure there’s still some command that is trying to do something,” he said. “There is some effort to revive Hamas.”

But “our goal is to kill them.”

Battalion 931 has done plenty of that, with more than 300 confirmed kills in the war, according to the commander.

The quality of the small Hamas cells the troops encounter varies, explained Meshulam’s deputy, Maj. Tal Klichovsky.

“There are some that are better trained, and some less well trained,” he said.

“But we destroyed them all.”

Israeli soldiers show journalists an underground tunnel where the Israel Defense Forces said it had found evidence hostages had been held by terrorists in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, on January 10. 2024. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

Despite the tactical success against Hamas, neither battalion has been able to locate any of the hostages that Hamas took into Gaza on October 7. While 253 were taken, 130 are now thought to remain in terrorists’ hands. The IDF has confirmed the deaths of at least 31 of the captives.

Nahal troops did find evidence of hostages having been in certain houses — Stars of David, Hebrew writing on walls, and shirts with Hebrew on them.

They also found cages in one of the tunnels.

It takes time

As both battalions fight remaining Hamas forces, attention outside the battlefield is focused on the possibility of a hostage deal that would include a long truce and the return of at least some Palestinians currently taking refuge in southern Gaza to the north.

A US-drafted proposal reportedly provides for a six-week pause in fighting during which some 40 hostages would be freed in exchange for some 400 Palestinian security prisoners. Recent days have seen Israeli officials express pessimism that a deal is close at hand.

Both battalion commanders said they had not been asked to make preparations for a truce, or for the return of Palestinian civilians to their homes in northern Gaza.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (2-L) heads the weekly cabinet meeting at the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv on January 7, 2024. (RONEN ZVULUN / POOL / AFP)

“There is an operational deployment that we know how to do” in case of a lull in fighting, said Alfasi. “We did it before.”

In the meantime, the commanders insisted that five months into the war, destroying the terror group is entirely achievable.

“If we didn’t believe in it, we’d have nothing to look for here,” said Meshulam. “Every day, we are defeating and destroying Hamas.”

“To truly deal with it, it takes time,” he said. “At least till the end of the year.”

Most Popular
read more: