Disaster just inside Gaza shows a war far from won, and shines light on a buffer zone
The death of 21 reservists just a few hundred yards away from a kibbutz murderously invaded by Hamas on October 7 brings a fresh test of Israel’s unity and determination
David Horovitz is the founding editor of The Times of Israel. He is the author of "Still Life with Bombers" (2004) and "A Little Too Close to God" (2000), and co-author of "Shalom Friend: The Life and Legacy of Yitzhak Rabin" (1996). He previously edited The Jerusalem Post (2004-2011) and The Jerusalem Report (1998-2004).
This Editor’s Note was sent out earlier Wednesday in ToI’s weekly update email to members of the Times of Israel Community. To receive these Editor’s Notes as they’re released, join the ToI Community here.
In a country this small, with large numbers of reservists deployed in a war, word of disaster travels fast. Everybody knows somebody who knows somebody who hears the first rumors. A pall of grief gradually descends.
And then the nation waits — for the army to contact the families whose lives will never be the same; to knock on the doors; to convey the worst news of all… and then, finally, to confirm what much of Israel already knew, and officially release the toll, and the names, and the details of how the lives were lost.
So it was on Monday, after 21 reservists — half of them aged over 30 — were killed when Hamas attacked them as they were preparing to demolish two buildings a few hundred yards inside Gaza, triggering the explosives the soldiers had laid, and bringing the buildings down upon them.
Could the demolitions have been carried out by the Air Force? Could fewer soldiers have been deployed in the area? The IDF is investigating and will, as always, learn the lessons.
This is a war against a pernicious terrorist army, on that terrorist army’s home turf, where it prepared for a decade and a half to slaughter an Israeli army that would have the temerity to challenge it.
It is astounding that the IDF has largely dismantled Hamas’s battalions in north and central Gaza, and has heavily impacted at least two of the four Hamas battalions in the terror-government’s Khan Younis bastion of power in the south, killing over 9,000 of Hamas’s estimated 30,000 gunmen and injuring thousands more, while keeping the IDF death toll to 219.
Again, this is a war — a war that Israel did not seek, to the staggering, catastrophic extent that it refused to believe all the evidence that Hamas was preparing its monstrous October 7 invasion; a war being fought in a territory from which Israel had unilaterally departed and where it had no territorial ambitions; a war that Israel had no choice but to wage, in order to prevent Hamas carrying out more October 7 massacres, to free our hostages, to deter our other enemies, and to enable the surviving residents of the Western Negev to return to their homes.
And soldiers die in wars.
But those 21 deaths — precious, beautiful lives lost from every sector of Israeli society: kibbutzniks and settlers and Orthodox and secular; Ashkenazim and Sephardim; a Bedouin and the son of a Filipino cleaning woman — are a tragedy and a test.
A test of our capacity to maintain national resilience and determination.
A test of our ability to achieve the most urgent imperative of bringing home 136 hostages — who, MKs were told again this week, are being subjected to monstrous abuse including rape — while pursuing the other existential requirement of dismantling Hamas.
A test of our fragile unity — in a nation with a divisive and largely dysfunctional political leadership, where much of the populace is mercifully pulling together and staunchly supportive of its loved ones on the front lines.
A buffer zone
The incident in which those 21 lives were lost turned a spotlight on a hitherto underreported aspect of IDF strategy in Gaza — the IDF’s gradual establishment of a buffer zone, approximately one kilometer (0.6 miles) deep, along the entire Gaza-Israel border.
Israel had previously built its border fortifications up to 300 yards inside Israeli territory. This new zone, flattening almost all construction and preventing any presence, is inside Gaza.
According to figures cited by Channel 12 news on Tuesday night, there were 2,850 buildings in this intended zone, all of which are to be demolished. Some 1,100 have been destroyed to date, most of them in the Khan Younis area.
Monday’s operation was to destroy two buildings facing Kibbutz Kissufim, where an estimated 70 Hamas terrorists murdered eight residents, including four members of the kibbutz’s civil defense squad, and six Thai workers, and abducted at least four hostages on October 7.
The purpose of the zone is threefold: To give the IDF more time to see anybody heading toward the border with murder in mind. To push back terrorist forces seeking to target Israel from inside Gaza. And to help restore a sense of security for surviving residents of the Israeli border communities, forced from their homes ever since and still unable to return.
The IDF has also forged a “corridor” running across central Gaza — from the border to the beach — separating the north of the Strip from the south. This is intended as a temporary measure.
The buffer zone, by contrast, is for the long term — and is taking shape in defiance of international opposition, including that of the United States, as National Security Council spokesman John Kirby made explicit on Tuesday: “We do not want to see the territory of Gaza reduced in any way.”
Khan Younis to Rafah
The fighting in Khan Younis has intensified in recent days, with the IDF having now surrounded the city.
Some military sources anticipate that the IDF will announce fairly shortly that it has achieved “operational control” in the Hamas stronghold.
And yet, Yahya Sinwar and other key Hamas leaders, long believed to be in the city, remain at large.
And while parts of the extensive tunnel network have been found — including the horrifying discovery of locked cages in which DNA and other evidence shows 20 hostages were held in terrible conditions; and where five-year-old freed hostage Emilia Aloni’s drawings were found — no hostages have been rescued.
It may be that Sinwar and his fellow monsters are still in the area, surrounded by hostage shield, or that they have fled to Rafah or beyond. If the IDF knows, it isn’t saying.
And if it has a plan for tackling Rafah, it isn’t saying that either. Fighting in that final target area, on the Egypt-Gaza border, will require coordination with Egypt. And for that the IDF’s commanders still look, apparently in vain, to the political leadership.
Not Netanyahu’s war
It’s easy to poke fun at opponents of Israel who don’t appear to have any basic knowledge of what it is they are protesting about.
Making lemonade ???? from watermelons ???? pic.twitter.com/lM0CvA52q6
— (((noa tishby))) (@noatishby) January 22, 2024
But as these two clips, two of many, underline, the phenomenon is far more depressing than amusing.
אני: חושב פעמיים אם לדבר בציבור על נושא שעליו כתבתי דוקטורט וחקרתי באופן מקצועי כבר שנים
ג'ן זי במערב:pic.twitter.com/5gdXcsBN6m— Neil Bar (@NeilMegas) January 23, 2024
And it says a lot about where people who doubtless think of themselves as decent and humane get their information, or don’t, and what kind of instincts bring them out to protest, sometimes alongside overt Hamas supporters, with such vigor, confidence and viciousness on the basis of such ignorance — in support of a barbaric terrorist organization that continues to declare openly its goal of driving Israel into the sea.
In which context, finally, it is worth noting the widely reported story that Sara Netanyahu sought to have Israel’s most resonant English-language spokesman, Eylon Levy, fired — for his crimes, before he joined the public diplomacy staff, of having protested the Netanyahu government’s prewar bid to disempower the judiciary and expressing support for Opposition Leader Yair Lapid.
Quick-thinking and flexi-faced, Levy appears to have been born to the public diplomacy role. Youngish, earnest, humorous when appropriate, he has articulated the basic truths of this conflict for a patently underinformed watching world.
Rather than resenting Levy because he doesn’t share her husband’s political vision, Mrs. Netanyahu should be celebrating his presence.
It underlines that this is not Netanyahu’s war or the Likud’s war, but Israel’s war of no choice — a war overwhelmingly supported at home, and deserving of backing abroad from all who want to ensure Israel’s survival and the defeat of its savage enemies.
