Though battered, Hamas still able to function in central Gaza, says tank commander
Speaking soon after his return from Netzarim Corridor, Lt. Col. Dori says he saw Hamas gunmen seize aid trucks, believes totally dismantling terror group will take a long time
Lazar Berman is The Times of Israel's diplomatic reporter
Hamas, though significantly weakened, is still able to initiate attacks in central Gaza, a senior officer in the 14th Reserve Armored Brigade told The Times of Israel days after completing an operation in the Bureij refugee camp there.
“In general, their motivation is high to act and try to create victory images, and to create achievements,” said Lt. Col. Dori, the brigade’s operations officer. The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit only allowed the publication of his first name.
In the area where he was operating, Hamas gunmen “are still working as a system and trying to carry out attacks,” Dori said, but generally avoid direct confrontation with troops.
The 14th Brigade was deployed to the Netzarim corridor in central Gaza in late August, and began a weeklong operation in Bureij in early October. The IDF announced the end of the operation on October 11 and the brigade has now left the Strip.
According to the IDF, the brigade attacked a compound in Bureij that was a school before the war. Hamas was using it as a staging point for attacks on IDF troops. “In the area of the school,” said the IDF, “the forces located terrorists who fired anti-tank missiles from the windows of the classrooms and also located weapons and ammunition.”
Dori, 47, said attacks like the anti-tank fire point to a functioning Hamas chain of command, at least in Bureij.
“Let’s do some reverse engineering,” he said. “There was a squad that received instructions, ostensibly from someone higher up. The weapons apparently moved from place to place. There is someone organizing this force. This shows some ability to carry things out, but we don’t see it in large numbers.”
After being hammered for over a year, Dori said, Hamas is extremely constrained in its capacity to carry out attacks, at least in the Netzarim area. Most of its attacks nowadays, he said, are done at least partly in order to create propaganda content for social media.
“They either retreat and station a sniper to search for our troops and wait until the moment our soldiers are slightly less aware, and that’s when they hope to harm us and film it,” said Dori, “or they wait to mine the areas they think we will reach.”
Last month, for example, the commander of the 401st Armored Brigade, Col. Ehsan Daqsa, was killed when he and other officers walked into an observation point that had been booby-trapped by Hamas.
The Hamas fighters “are not brave,” said Dori. “They don’t try fighting face-to-face with IDF soldiers, because they know they will always lose.”
The 14th Reserve Armored Brigade operates in central Gaza, October 2024 (IDF Spokesperson’s Office)
Despite the IDF’s tactical success in Gaza, it remains unclear how the fighting will end. Israel set its war goals there as the destruction of Hamas and the return of hostages, and the IDF assessed in September that Hamas has been largely defeated militarily, and is now effectively a guerrilla terror group.
Dori believes finishing off Hamas is achievable, but not at all imminent: “We are continuing to take apart its capabilities. It takes time; it’s long and hard, no question. But it’s not endless. We strike hard in the areas where we know they are organizing, and destroy more weapons.”
The crewmen of the 14th Brigade have done over 250 days of reserve service in the war that started with the Hamas attack on October 7 last year. They initially helped secure Kibbutz Mefalsim and Kibbutz Kfar Aza, both on the Gaza border, on October 8, when some of the terrorists who carried out the invasion and massacre were still at large, and then maneuvered into Gaza under the 252nd Division on October 28. In two months of intense fighting, the brigade operated in the northern Gaza Strip and captured the compound known as the Palestine Outpost, used by Hamas as a training site for attacks.
The brigade killed hundreds of Hamas terrorists during its time in Gaza, losing eight soldiers with another 83 injured. Eleven soldiers were wounded in the August-October deployment in the Netzarim area.
Daily convoys
The brigade had very little contact with civilians in Netzarim, where the IDF has carved a corridor that runs across Gaza, isolating the north of the Strip from the south. There were occasional Gazans heading south to the Muwasi humanitarian zone, but in general, said Dori, civilians knew not to approach troops.
However, the force did facilitate humanitarian convoys almost every day.
“The reports that the Gazan population doesn’t receive food and all sorts of things are simply not true,” said Dori, describing the situation in the area where he and his troops were deployed. “With my own eyes, I saw humanitarian convoys go in almost every day,” with the exception of days when operational reasons precluded this. “But the next day, the amount is made up.”
Israel has come under criticism over the quantity of aid reaching Gazan civilians, with the US on Monday charging that Israel was failing to meet its obligations, with potential consequences for US weapons supplies. Israel says it is not blocking aid.
Once supplies get to Gaza, humanitarian groups still face obstacles distributing them to warehouses and then to people in need.
“If there is any reason food doesn’t reach civilians, it’s because of Hamas looters that don’t allow their civilians to reach it or don’t distribute it,” Dori maintained.
He said he saw Hamas gunmen steal aid: “They wait for trucks to come, raid them and loot them.”
At the beginning of the brigade’s deployment, some soldiers asked why they were being required to facilitate aid convoys, said Dori. But, he went on, it was explained to them that for the IDF to remain in Netzarim, it needs to ensure that aid continues to flow through the area. “The Netzarim Corridor is a bone in Hamas’s throat. It’s a strategic asset for Israel — a tool for the country to reach its war goals.”
Dori was adamant that the brigade’s soldiers uphold the moral and legal standards of war.
Last month, the New York Times alleged that IDF troops were using Gazans as human shields during operations in the Strip. The newspaper said it spoke with seven IDF soldiers who said the practice was “routine, commonplace, and organized.”
The IDF denied the practice, telling The Times of Israel that “the orders and instructions of the IDF forbid using civilians in Gaza who were arrested in the field for military missions.”
“Unequivocally, no,” Dori said of the human shield allegations. “We didn’t do that, we didn’t see that, we certainly didn’t instruct anyone to do that. I didn’t come across anything like or hear about anything like that.”
Dori said that if a soldier ever did something unethical or immoral with a civilian or captured soldier, they would be immediately expelled from the unit.
“The advantage of reservists is that they’re more mature and more deliberate,” he added. “And they usually think twice before they do anything.”
