‘Just like before Oct. 7’: Surveillance soldiers on Gaza border again say they’re seeing terror activity

Surveillance soldiers on the Gaza border are sounding the alarm about armed terrorist activity inside the Gaza Strip, in what they said feels like a repeat of their unheeded warnings before the October 7, 2023, onslaught.

Leading up to that Hamas-led invasion and massacre, the surveillance soldiers sent alerts about terrorists training for the attack, and were infamously ignored. Some of the surveillance soldiers, who are women, said sexism was a factor in their warnings being brushed aside.

Now, Channel 12 quotes some of the unnamed soldiers who describe a feeling of deja vu as, the network says, they report watching armed terrorists operate and lay explosives in Gaza, on the Yellow Line that divides the territory between Israeli and Hamas control.

“I feel just like on October 6,” says one of the soldiers. “What’s the difference? That we’re identifying it on the Yellow Line and not on the [border] fence. That’s the difference. We’re really seeing that they know we won’t fire on them. The Gazans aren’t idiots. In the end, they’re constantly testing us and seeing if we react or not. It’s just like before October 7.”

In one quote, a soldier says she feels “helpless” in the face of the terrorist activity she sees over the border. In another comment, a soldier says she and her comrades “feel a little unnecessary. If I know that, in any case, they won’t do anything with my identification [of terror activity], what’s the point of my sitting eight hours a day and monitoring the area super-super-closely?”

Amid efforts to advance a US-backed plan to disarm Hamas in the Strip, Israel halted airstrikes in Gaza for a week before resuming them yesterday. Strikes in Gaza now reportedly require the chief of staff’s approval.

A surveillance soldier quoted by the network complains that combat soldiers stationed in Gaza are being used as “human shields.”

“In the end, the soldiers are stationed a few hundred meters from these terrorists,” one of the surveillance soldiers says of the combat troops in Gaza. “We can’t just abandon them.”