In deadliest incident of Gaza combat, 21 soldiers killed as buildings collapse in blast

Explosion possibly caused by Palestinian RPG attack as IDF prepared structures for demolition using explosives, with nearby tank hit by a missile; death toll in ground op reaches

Twenty-one Israeli soldiers were killed Monday when they came under attack in the southern Gaza Strip, triggering a blast that collapsed two buildings with soldiers inside them, the military said Tuesday morning.

The buildings were being rigged for demolition by troops when Palestinian gunmen fired an RPG at a tank securing the forces. A second blast then occurred in the buildings, possibly as a result of a second RPG, leading to their collapse.

It was the single deadliest incident since the start of Israel’s ground offensive in the enclave, and raised the military death toll in the operation to 219.

At a press conference Tuesday morning, Israel Defense Forces Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said that troops were operating in an area around 600 meters from the border, across from the southern Israeli community of Kissufim.

They were destroying structures and Hamas sites as part of the army’s efforts to establish a buffer zone to allow residents of Israeli border communities to return to their homes.

“At around 4 p.m., an RPG was fired by gunmen at a tank securing the forces, and simultaneously, an explosion occurred in two two-story buildings. The buildings collapsed due to this explosion, while most of the forces were inside and near them,” he said.

According to military sources, two of the soldiers were killed by the RPG fire on the tank. Several other soldiers were wounded in the blast, including one in serious condition.

Hagari said the explosion in the buildings was likely a result of mines planted by troops for the purpose of later demolishing the structures, but the cause of the detonation was still under investigation. The buildings may have been hit by a second RPG.

Rescue forces described the scene as reminiscent of the aftermath of an earthquake.

For several hours, a large number of troops from the IDF’s search and rescue units worked to extract the casualties from the collapsed buildings.

The IDF was investigating the circumstances of the incident in order to prevent its recurrence.

By Tuesday afternoon, the IDF named all 21 soldiers killed in the incident, all of them reservists.

They were named as:

Sgt. Maj. (res.) Matan Lazar, 32, of the 261st Brigade’s 6261st Battalion, from Haifa.
Sgt. First Class (res.) Hadar Kapeluk, 23, a squad commander in the 261st Brigade’s 8208th Battalion, from Mevo Beitar.
Sgt. Maj. (res.) Sergey Gontmaher, 37, of the 261st Brigade’s 8208th Battalion, from Ramat Gan.
Sgt. First Class (res.) Elkana Yehuda Sfez, 25, of the 261st Brigade’s 8208th Battalion, from Kiryat Arba.
Sgt. First Class (res.) Yuval Lopez, 27,of the 205th Brigade’s 9206th Battalion, from Alon Shvut.
Master Sgt. (res.) Yoav Levi, 29, of the 261st Brigade’s 8208th Battalion, from Yehud-Monosson.
Sgt. First Class (res.) Nicholas Berger, 22, of the 261st Brigade’s 8208th Battalion, from Jerusalem.
Sgt. First Class (res.) Cedrick Garin, 23, of the 261st Brigade’s 8208th Battalion, from Tel Aviv.
Sgt. Maj. (res.) Rafael Elias Mosheyoff, 33, of the 261st Brigade’s 6261st Battalion, from Pardes Hanna-Karkur.
Sgt. Maj. (res.) Barak Haim Ben Valid, 33, a squad commander in the 261st Brigade’s 6261st Battalion, from Rishon Lezion.
Sgt. First Class (res.) Ahmad Abu Latif, 26, of the 261st Brigade’s 8208th Battalion, from Rahat.
Cpt. (res.) Nir Binyamin, 29, of the 261st Brigade’s 8208th Battalion, from Givatayim.
Master Sgt. (res.) Elkana Vizel, 35, a squad commander in the 261st Brigade’s 8208th Battalion, from Bnei Dakalim.
Sgt. First Class (res.) Israel Socol, 24, of the 261st Brigade’s 8208th Battalion, from Karnei Shomron.
Cpt. (res.) Ariel Mordechay Wollfstal, 28, of the 205th Brigade’s 9206th Battalion, from Elazar.
Sgt. First Class (res.) Sagi Idan, 24, of the 261st Brigade’s 8208th Battalion, from Rosh Haayin.
Sgt. Maj. (res.) Mark Kononovich, 35, of the 261st Brigade’s 8208th Battalion, from Herzliya.
Sgt. Maj. (res.) Itamar Tal, 32, of the 261st Brigade’s 6261st Battalion, from Mesilot.
Sgt. Maj. (res.) Adam Bismut, 35, a squad commander in the 261st Brigade’s 6261st Battalion, from Karnei Shomron.
Sgt. Maj. (res.) Shay Biton Hayun, 40, of the 261st Brigade’s 8208th Battalion, from Zichron Yaakov.
Sgt. Maj. (res.) Daniel Kasau Zegeye, 38, of the 261st Brigade’s 8208th Battalion, from Yokne’am Illit.
An additional three soldiers were killed in combat Monday as part of a stepped-up assault on the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis.

Israel launched the offensive on Gaza after the October 7 Hamas onslaught into southern Israel when terrorists overran military bases, communities and a music festival, killing some 1,200 people, most of them civilians, amid widespread scenes of horrific abuse. The terrorists also took 253 hostages.

Israel vowed to destroy Hamas and free the hostages. However, three months in, the offensive has not yet achieved those goals and pressure has mounted within Israel to reach a deal with the terror group for the return of 136 people still held in Gaza — not all of them alive. International pressure has also intensified to bring the war to an end, amid the mounting Palestinian toll and the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza.

The Hamas-run health ministry said Monday that 25,295 Gazans had been killed so far in the war, an unverified figure that includes Hamas operatives as well as those killed in failed Palestinian rocket launches. The IDF says it has killed more than 9,000 Hamas members since launching the offensive. A further 1,000 were killed in Israel on October 7.

Israel has intensified its military campaign in southern Gaza in recent days, focused on the city of Khan Younis.

Four brigades, led by the 98th Division, are taking part in the offensive, which began Sunday with a series of airstrikes on Hamas sites in the area and has continued with intensive gun battles that the IDF says have killed dozens of gunmen.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Tuesday the heavy losses suffered by the military only underlined the necessity to push on.

“Our hearts are with the dear families in their most difficult time,” Gallant wrote of the “difficult and painful morning.”

But, he said, “this is a war that will determine the future of Israel for decades to come – the fall of the soldiers compels us to achieve the goals of the fighting.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he mourned the deaths and wished to “strengthen the dear families of our heroic warriors who fell on the battlefield. I know that for these families, their lives will be changed forever.”

Israel will “will not stop fighting until absolute victory,” he said.

“The IDF has launched an investigation into the disaster. We must learn the necessary lessons and do everything to preserve the lives of our warriors,” he continued.

Later, in a joint video statement, that also included war cabinet minister Benny Gantz, the leaders pledged that the war will continue at full strength despite the loss of 24 soldiers Monday.

“We bow our heads in memory of our fallen, and yet we do not for a moment stop striving for an irreplaceable goal – the achievement of complete victory,” said Netanyahu.

“We continue at this time in the spirit of the fallen,” added Gallant.

“We will do it together, we will do it in unity. I ask to strengthen the bereaved families, to know that we have to continue. I have no doubt that when they set out on their mission yesterday, they intended for us to continue, and that is what we will do,” Gantz said.

Many family members of the 136 remaining hostages held by Hamas, organizing through the Hostage and Missing Families Forum, have grown increasingly vocal in their opposition to the government’s strategy, saying the continued fighting is putting their loved ones at risk.

On Sunday evening, the families rallied outside Netanyahu’s home in Jerusalem to demand he reach a deal for the hostages’ release. On Monday, relatives of hostages crashed a session of the Knesset’s Finance Committee, bearing signs that read “You will not sit here while they die there.”

Two hundred and fifty-three people, including children and the elderly, were abducted by Hamas on October 7. In late November, 105 hostages were released during a two-week “humanitarian ceasefire” mediated by the US and Qatar, and several were previously recovered in other circumstances, but talks of a further deal have languished since that ceasefire collapsed.

International pressure has also mounted with much of Gaza’s population displaced and a rising death toll.

On Monday it was reported that Israel has submitted a proposal through Qatari and Egyptian mediators that would see it agree to pause its military offensive against Hamas for as long as two months, in exchange for a phased release of the remaining hostages.

The proposal does not heed the Hamas demand for Israel to end the war completely, but does appear to go further than previous Israeli offers, according to the Axios news site, which cited two Israeli officials.

The offer was publicized as White House Middle East czar Brett McGurk was in the region for meetings with Egyptian and Qatari counterparts aimed at advancing a hostage deal, a US official told The Times of Israel.

How a Ragtag Militia in Yemen Became a Nimble U.S. Foe

The Iran-backed Houthis perfected the tactics of irregular warfare during years of conflict against a Saudi-led coalition, military officials say.
Jan. 24, 2024

For years, the scrappy Iran-backed Yemeni rebels known as the Houthis did such a good job of bedeviling American partners in the Middle East that Pentagon war planners started copying some of their tactics.

Noting that the Houthis had managed to weaponize commercial radar systems that are commonly available in boating stores and make them more portable, a senior U.S. commander challenged his Marines to figure out something similar. By September 2022, Marines in the Baltic Sea were adapting Houthi-inspired mobile radar systems.

So senior Pentagon officials knew as soon as the Houthis started attacking ships in the Red Sea that they would be hard to tame.

As the Biden administration approaches its third week of airstrikes against Houthi targets in Yemen, the Pentagon is trying to thread an impossibly tiny needle: making a dent in the Houthis’ ability to hit commercial and Navy vessels without dragging the United States into a prolonged war.

It is a difficult task, made more so because the Houthis have perfected the tactics of irregular warfare, American military officials say. The group does not have many big weapons depots for American fighter jets to bomb — Houthi fighters are constantly on the move with missiles they launch from pickup trucks on remote beaches before hustling away.

The first barrage of American-led airstrikes nearly two weeks ago hit nearly 30 locations in Yemen, destroying around 90 percent of the targets struck, Pentagon officials said. But even with that high success rate, the Houthis retained around 75 percent of their ability to fire missiles and drones at ships transiting the Red Sea, those officials acknowledged.

Since then, the Pentagon has carried out several more rounds of strikes. And the Houthis have continued their attacks on ships transiting the Red Sea.

“There is a level of sophistication here that you can’t ignore,” said Gen. Joseph L. Votel, who led the U.S. military’s Central Command from 2016 to 2019, as Saudi Arabia was trying to defeat the Houthis in Yemen.

So far the Pentagon strategy has been to put armed Reaper drones and other surveillance platforms in the skies over Yemen, so that U.S. warplanes and ships can hit Houthi mobile targets as they pop up.

On Monday night, the United States and Britain struck nine sites in Yemen, hitting multiple targets at each location. Unlike most of the previous strikes, which were more targets of opportunity, the nighttime strikes were planned. They hit radars as well as drone and missile sites and underground weapons storage bunkers.

This middle ground reflects the administration’s attempt to chip away at the Houthis’ ability to menace merchant ships and military vessels but not hit so hard as to kill large numbers of Houthi fighters and commanders, potentially unleashing even more mayhem into the region.

But officials say they will continue to try to hit mobile targets as analysts search for more fixed targets.

After nearly a decade of Saudi airstrikes, the Houthis are skilled at concealing what they have, putting some of their launchers and weaponry in urban areas and shooting missiles from the backs of vehicles or tractors before scooting off.

And the weapons that are destroyed are soon replaced by Iran, as a never-ending stream of dhows ferry more weaponry into Yemen, U.S. officials say.

Even a seemingly successful American commando operation on Jan. 11 that seized a small boat carrying ballistic-missile and cruise-missile components to Yemen came at a cost: the Pentagon said on Sunday that the status of two Navy SEALs reported missing during the operation had been changed to dead after an “exhaustive” 10-day search. Navy commandos, backed by helicopters and drones hovering overhead, had boarded the small boat and seized propulsion and guidance systems, warheads and other items.

The Houthis are believed to have had underground assembly and manufacturing sites even before the civil war began in Yemen in 2014. The militia seized the country’s army arsenal when it took over Sana, the capital, a decade ago. Since then, it has amassed a diverse and increasingly lethal arsenal of cruise and ballistic missiles and one-way attack drones, most supplied by Iran, military analysts said.

“It’s mind-blowing, the diversity of their arsenal,” said Fabian Hinz, an expert on missiles, drones and the Middle East at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese militia, has helped as well. Top Houthi commanders studied under Hezbollah trainers in Lebanon on, first and foremost, how to be adaptable, said Hisham Maqdashi, a defense adviser with the internationally recognized Yemeni government.

Hezbollah “trained them to be able to adapt to the changes of the war in Yemen,” Mr. Maqdashi said in an interview. “They did not train them on the specifics, but on how to be very dynamic.”

That leaves the United States and its coalition partners with only three viable options, given the parameters of President Biden’s strategic aims in Yemen, military analysts say. They could commandeer the weapons coming by sea from Iran; find the missiles, which requires extensive intelligence; or attack the launch sites.

The third option is the hardest. Houthi militants are believed to hide mobile missile launchers in a range of locations, anywhere from inside culverts to beneath highway overpasses. They are easily moved for hasty launches.

The Houthi mobile maneuvers worked so well against Saudi Arabia that the Marines began an experimental effort to copy them. They developed a mobile radar, essentially a Simrad Halo24 radar — you can get one for about $3,000 at Bass Pro Shops — that can be put on any fishing boat. It takes five minutes to set up. The Marines, like the Houthis, have been looking into how to use the radars to send data back on what’s going on at sea.

Lt. Gen. Frank Donovan, now the vice commander of United States Special Operations Command, noticed what the Houthis were doing with the radar back when he was leading a Fifth Fleet amphibious task force operating in the southern Red Sea. Trying to figure out how the Houthis were targeting ships, General Donovan soon realized the Houthis were mounting off-the-shelf radars on vehicles on the shore and moving them around.

He challenged his Second Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion to develop a similar system.

Source article link:  Haaretz: Armed and Anxious, Residents Along Israel's Borders Are Bracing for the Worst

Rafi Nagar from Kibbutz Ashdot Yaakov, near Lake Kinneret in northern Israel, cried out on Facebook. “Help!” he wrote in a recent post. “Thousands of Jordanian commandos can easily cross the border, massacre and slaughter people in our kibbutzim and moshavim.” Describing a sharp rise in the frequency of training exercises by the Jordanian Legion, Nagar expressed concern that under the guise of the exercises, an attack from the other side of the border was being organized.

“Sometimes I’m afraid to look out the window, in case I suddenly see armed Jordanian soldiers attacking us from the fields. It’s an insane classic case of crying ‘wolf,’ when at the moment of truth they’ll catch us unprepared, with our pants down,” he warned, and called on the prime minister, the defense minister and the Israel Defense Forces ‘to stop the next ‘itbah al yahud’” – slaughter (of) the Jews.

Nagar’s post resonated strongly among residents of the Jordan Valley when it was published two weeks ago. But there were also reactions that arrived from completely different directions, both literally and metaphorically.

“A day or two after I published the post, I started to get threats from Yemen,” Nagar tells Haaretz. “They sent me a few hundred messages until I blocked them.” The screenshot he shows is full of frightening WhatsApp messages from a phone number in Yemen. “Hello, how are you,” one Houthi writer addresses him politely, in Hebrew. “I am happy to inform you that your house has become a target for us, the Yemeni Houthis, and we will target you with drones and winged missiles, Jewish man. There’s no need to fear the Jordanian army… I recommend that you leave your house before we send you to hell.” The WhatsApp thread went on and on, and included a few unanswered calls, grinning or tearful emojis and images of Palestinian flags.

The hostilities that erupted on October 7 have severely shaken Israelis’ feeling of security along borders that until recently were considered to be quiet – those with Syria, Jordan and Egypt, as well as the Green Line. Fears of still-unlikely developments, such as an invasion by thousands of Jordanian troops, or a Houthi targeted assassination because of a Facebook post, are mingled with apprehension that has a more solid basis.

People who until not long ago looked east or west and saw the pastoral landscape of a neighboring country, are now focusing on the border fence, wondering how long it would take for someone to cut it with a cordless circular saw, or what sort of tractor can knock it down with one blow. Even in tranquil, laid-back communities, residents are trying to use connections to obtain night-vision equipment or crates of ammunition from the army for their security teams.

Many security arrangements that once gave people a feeling of calm are now unsettling. Eitan Ronen, from Kadesh Barnea, near the Egyptian border, glances apprehensively at the tank deployed on the ridge nearby to protect him and his neighbors. An Israeli tank used to be considered a big deal. Now, after it turns out that a motorized hang glider can easily fly over it, things look different.

“A tank can be disabled, too,” Ronen says. “We’ve lost our faith in the army.” A range of scenarios troubles him: a terrorist cell in Sinai that decides to attack, Egyptian police who suddenly run amok, Hamas terrorists who cross into Egypt from Gaza and hope to infiltrate into Israel from there.

Like many others in the frontier communities, Ronen was recruited to serve in the local defensive squad under an emergency order, and he’s on guard duty 24/7.

“At age 40, I was exempted from reserve duty,” he says. “When they told me, ‘Come and volunteer,’ I told them I was done with weapons, it’s not my scene, I never liked it. Today I understand that it’s not a question of liking or not liking.”

Now the person who makes a living growing tomatoes, strawberries and pineapples has submitted a request for a rifle permit. “In Tel Aviv I’d prefer a pistol,” he explains, “but here there are large expanses of land; it’s better to have a weapon with a barrel, with range. So you don’t need to have someone get all the way to you in order to stop them.”

He and his buddies on the squad “want to upgrade it,” he says – to be better trained and be issued arms that will enable them to cope with more than light weapons. Against armored vehicles, for example.

Do you mean that you want RPGs?

“I don’t know what’s involved. We’ll let the IDF decide. But as an emergency community squad we need to be trained in using the right equipment. There won’t be time to weigh a response. We won’t have the privilege of waiting for someone to arrive and help us. We will have to defend ourselves, we have to be able to help ourselves.

“This is a season when there is a lot of fog, a transitional time in terms of the weather,” he adds. “We get ourselves organized at dawn, we look out, everyone with their weapon cocked, waiting to see who will come at us from out of the fog.”

Geological advantage

Merom Golan, 900 meters above sea level, 2.5 kilometers from the border with Syria, last Sunday. A hard rain is falling on the kibbutz, but in the Kosovski Mizrahi home it’s warm and pleasant – they’ve lit the wood-burning stove for the first time this season. The mother, Galit, shows us the safe room, where she and her three children have been sleeping since the war started. Oded, the father, sleeps in a different room because he gets up early for guard duty, as part of the kibbutz security detail. There’s no shooting into the northern Golan Heights these days, but a Syrian militia fired a rocket at the southern Golan earlier in the war, and the family isn’t taking chances.

“Supposedly, you live here with the feeling that everything is green, beautiful, pleasant and calm,” Galit says. “The children wander around the kibbutz freely. But you’re not calm at all. My husband, who’s not a hysterical type, moved our two cars from the private parking space to the public area, so it would look like there’s no one at home. You hear the kids – who are 11, 12 and 15 – talking among themselves about where they’ll hide, all kinds of tricks they’ll use if something happens, like people used there [in the communities near Gaza, on October 7].”

The safe room of course now has the requisite wooden plank with the hole that’s intended to prevent anyone from breaking in through the door. Still, Galit’s plan is that if they come under missile or drone attack, not to use the plank, because “if part of the house should collapse and we are wounded in the safe room, it will make rescuing us difficult.”

Merom Golan borders on a small demilitarized zone that is guarded by the United Nations, an area that’s a buffer between Israel and Syria. But Galit thinks that the UN will not necessarily intervene if its personnel see terrorists making their way into Israel. “And then, what will stop them? The fence? You know, not long ago there was an Israeli woman who simply walked into Syria.”

On the other hand, Galit takes comfort in the geological advantage she has over her neighbors in the Upper Galilee. “Here at least the ground is basalt,” she notes. “It’s impossible to dig into it easily, like with limestone. No tunnel will suddenly appear here in the middle of the kibbutz without us hearing something.” Oded, an engineer who was in the midst of a work meeting via Zoom, while still in his guard uniform, remarked, “There’s quiet here, but no tranquility. You don’t know how fragile the border is.”

There have been precious few shooting accidents along the border with Syria in the past, but the hostilities in Gaza have caused some residents and academics to look at the area in a different light.

“Syria is a wide-open expanse for all kinds of terrorist organizations that might be of concern to Israel, and it’s unlikely that the Syrian army has any interest in stopping them,” says Yehuda Blanga, an expert on Syria in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan. “Could a squad like that cut the fence tomorrow? I don’t think so. Along this border, there is a presence of ground forces. In Gaza we relied too much on technological means. When you lose a presence on the ground, you lose eyes and contact.” In Dr. Blanga’s view, Syria does not pose any particular danger at the moment. On the other hand, he’s aware of the diminished value of so-called security assessments these days. “Anything is possible,” he concludes.

Blanga ranks Egypt a bit higher on the scale of danger. Just last June, he recalls, an Egyptian police officer crossed the border in the Mount Harif area through a gate that was shut with only plastic handcuffs. He killed Staff Sgt. Ori Yitzhak Illouz and Sgt. Lia Ben Nun, and afterward Staff Sgt. Ohad Dahan also fell in the exchange of fire with the intruder. In addition to the danger posed by the Egyptian security forces, Blanga notes that several terrorist organizations are operating in the Sinai Peninsula. Terrorism in Sinai has abated over the past decade in the wake of an uncompromising struggle waged by Egyptian President al-Sissi. But even so, there are all manner of worrisome elements there, among them organizations that smuggled in to Gaza vast quantity of arms for the Hamas terrorists.

“I happen to be the regional paramedic,” says Sharon from Moshav Be’er Milka (who preferred not to give his last name), about one kilometer from the Egyptian border. “Based on the amount of Valium I have dispensed in the past month, I can tell you exactly what the level of tension is in each community. It’s no simple thing, especially in Kadesh Barnea, which is right smack on the border. You jump over the fence and in a minute you reach the houses. One person there was sitting in his living room when a stray bullet passed half a meter over his head and lodged in the wall.”

The tight cluster of communities belonging to what is called the Nitzana Salient – Kadesh Barnea, Be’er Milka, Kmehin, Ezuz and Nitzana – lie close to the border, about halfway along an imaginary line drawn from Kibbutz Sde Boker to El Arish in Egypt. These locales are still grappling with the loss of two of their fighters, members of a local antiterrorist reserve force that rushed to assist besieged residents living near Gaza on October 7 and were killed: Capt. (res.) Iftach Gorny, of Be’er Milka, and Master Sgt. (res.) Liran Almosnino, from Kmehin.

“There’s a bad feeling around here,” Sharon asserts. “There’s no sense of security, there are no fences that can deter incursions in these communities – there’s nothing. The army is lulling us; they say we’re not at risk. No one has said, ‘Let’s look at the area, we’ll examine the threats and deal with them.’ It’s all Band-Aids. On the Egyptian side we see more and more settlement. Buildings. Solar panels. Look at the satellite image on Google. What’s happening there security-wise? Are terrorist cells being established there? We don’t know. Even on our side there are cannabis farms, there are arms caches in the desert. It’s Colombia here. For the right price, anything can happen here. To take over our community you don’t need 50 terrorists – five will do.”

‘A cardboard settlement’

“A window of opportunity has been opened here for the peoples of the region, who have had their fill of seeing the war crimes of ‘Israel,’ which have been ongoing for 75 years… ‘Israel’ is not fate, it’s a cardboard settlement… The victory of the Palestinian resistance in Gaza necessarily talks about the collapse of the Zionist project and of American influence.” That quote comes from a story published by the Jordanian newspaper Al Ghad last week, which, unusually, was translated into Hebrew and appeared on the front page, among other articles in Arabic. The headline: “What’s after Israel.”

The article is rife with hatred of Israel and expresses the hope that with one little nudge, it will collapse. Those aren’t unusual sentiments in Jordan, especially these days, and Israelis who see that country from the windows of their home are aware of this. Experts on the Hashemite kingdom explain that even if the accepted estimate is that “80 percent of Jordan’s population is Palestinian” is exaggerated, it is still more than 50 percent, and the rest don’t exactly sing the Israeli national anthem in their sleep, either.

The scenario in which a Hamas-like incursion takes place on the Jordanian border became very real, at least momentarily, for Hadas Sarig Rapaport, who lives with her husband and their four children on Tzofar, a moshav in the Arava desert south of the Dead Sea. “On October 7, I received a message on Telegram [from the kibbutz security team] saying that terrorists had infiltrated Tzofar. I took kitchen knives, wrapped them in a towel and went with the children into a room whose door you can kick open; we don’t even have a safe room. It wasn’t until a few minutes later that it turned out there had been a spelling mistake of one letter: The warning was real, but it was for Tzohar, which is near the Gaza Strip. A mistake of one letter.”

Rapaport got another false alarm from the security squad, most likely as a result of some sort of error by the army, while she was in Greece, where the family had fled, in the meantime. They returned only two weeks later.

Residents of the eastern part of the Arava know that there are no fences, or virtually none, demarcating the border in their vicinity, a realization that doesn’t exactly help people stay calm these days.

“We want to advance the idea of building a serious physical barrier along the border with Jordan,” says Uri Lev, the security officer of the regional council. “There have been a lot of incidents here involving arms and drug smuggling. Those smuggling routes can be used by terrorists, too.”

Experts on Jordan note that very close security coordination still exists between the IDF and the Jordanian Legion. Amman has a vested interest in nipping in the bud any sign of terrorism in the kingdom, and to date seems to be doing that successfully. One reason is the government’s desire to prevent instability that could put their own country at risk. Still, a scenario in which a soldier runs amok or where, despite everything, a terrorist squad infiltrates from the east, is not completely ruled out.

It’s known, for example, that Islamist terror groups are trying to gain a foothold in Ma’an, a small city located some 55 kilometers across from the middle section of the Arava. “It is a very poor city,” says Prof. (emeritus) Asher Susser, from the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University, an authority on Jordan. “Armed Islamist groups operated there, and there were periods there of sympathy for Islamic State. But the government for the most part has the upper hand in dealing with these groups.”

Meanwhile, about 200 kilometers north of the Arava, residents of the Jordan Valley are grappling not only with pervasive anxiety about a possible infiltration, but also with actual incursions (albeit by migrant workers), in the wake of which they have had to hide in their homes. The reason is visible from a small observation point, about half a kilometer from the fence surrounding Kibbutz Ashdot Yaakov. Through a carob tree, on which a proudly weaned toddler has hung a pacifier, looms the security fence. Beyond it is the Yarmuk River, which once may once have been an obstacle, but which is barely trickling now because its waters are trapped upstream.

“Even a cat could cross the Yarmuk,” Eli Arazi, a veteran kibbutz member, guffaws. Everyone, smugglers included, knows that this is an easy place to cross over into Israel. Just last Tuesday six migrant laborers from the Far East crossed there. “They were caught here,” Arazi says, pointing at a water reservoir on which a solar field has been placed. “It’s not far at all from the houses.”

The infiltration of workers, weapons and drugs is not new along this stretch of the border. What has changed is that the army is far more alert now, with the result that practically every bird that lands on the fence sets off a “Turkish horseman” alarm – code for the entry of some unidentified object into Israel. Two or three times a week, residents in the area take shelter in their homes because of an infiltration warning. In addition there are incessant sounds of Jordanian soldiers firing shots in the distance, which may not have increased but are more worrying now.

“There is terrible panic here,” Arazi says. “It’s nerve-wracking.”

As is the case in other frontier areas today, here too the level of stress is directly affected not only by the objective security situation, but also by history and people’s psychological state. “I personally am less worried,” Arazi explains. “In the War of Attrition [1967-1970], terrorists used to come here, shoot at us and plant land mines in the fields. In the morning we would go with prodders to look for the mines – people were killed.”

What’s happening now seems less destabilizing, he adds, but he can’t argue with young kibbutz members, parents of young children, who are getting sick of the present state of attrition. “They tell you, ‘Do you remember the murder of the seven girls at Naharayim [by a Jordanian soldier in 1997]? That could happen again.’ To that I have no answer.”

Only 460 bullets

There is no need to dredge up memories from the 1990s or use much imagination when considering the plight of communities along the seam line that borders the West Bank, with its separation barrier. Just last February the state comptroller warned that even though more than 8 billion shekels had been invested over the years in building the barrier, and hundreds of millions allocated to its maintenance, as of 2021 half of it (!) was deemed to be in substandard condition. According to the comptroller, this failing was explained to the security cabinet and to Prime Minister Netanyahu “from 2017 onward,” but nothing was done to address it until 11 people were murdered during the course of attacks perpetrated in 2022 by terrorists who entered through breaches in the fence.

Subsequently the level of security was tightened and repairs were made, but thousands of Palestinians have still managed to enter Israel every day for years, without a proper work permit, by foot and by car. Last week a vehicle carrying three terrorists armed with rifles, ammunition and axes reached at the “tunnel road” checkpoint south of Jerusalem, apparently on the way to carry out a massacre in Israel. They killed Cpl. Avraham Fetena of the Border Police and wounded five other members of the security forces, before being shot to death.

Yad Hana is situated close to the separation barrier in Hefer Valley, in central Israel. Nevertheless, the head of the community’s council, Maya Yaron, reports that only now, in the wake of the war in Gaza, is part of the part of the barrier, made of metal, being replaced with a concrete wall. “But the wall doesn’t prevent people from crossing over, either,” she points out. “You can climb over it.”

Yaron mentions incessant shooting from the direction of the West Bank city of Tul Karm, because of which Yad Hana residents have recently been forbidden to walk along their community’s perimeter fence. “Every hour or two we have light-arms fire aimed at us and at the soldiers who guard us,” she says. “We shoot back at them.”

Benny Chifrut, security chief of the neighboring community of Bat Hefer, also talks about shooting – we too heard gunfire and explosions during our visit – from the direction of the West Bank village of Shweika. There are only about 80 meters between the first houses of Bat Hefer and the security barrier.

“People simply go outside and shoot at us,” Chifrut says. “The latest TikTok star can be seen stepping onto a bale of hay, firing a round and running off. It’s not precision shooting, so it’s not very dangerous. But it’s still dangerous all the same.” When Daniel, the Haaretz photographer, wanted to climb up to the roof of one of the buildings in Bat Hefer to get a better vantage point, he was immediately told to drop the idea, because he would be an easy target.

For its part, the IDF doesn’t dismiss the idea that there are weapons in the Palestinian villages abutting the barrier or shots being fired, sometimes at soldiers, but it claims that they don’t endanger the residents. “So far there hasn’t been precise gunfire aimed at Bat Hefer and Yad Hana,” says a senior officer who knows the area, adding that he knows of no prohibition on taking a walk along the fence or going up to one’s roof, and that every report of a suspicious incident is carefully looked into.

Based on interviews in many of the communities we visited for this article, it seems that residents fearful of the security situation cannot manage without putting their hands deep in their pockets or obtaining donations. People living along borders and the security barrier are not waiting for the state to act, but have bought whatever they could lay their hands on, from flashlights and ceramic vests to M-16 rifles and drones. When the war broke out residents of Bat Hefer, for example, lost no time finding money to underwrite the installation of surveillance cameras on the separation fence itself; they also set up a command center with volunteer spotters.

"We realized that the army hadn’t recovered” from the shock of October 7, relates Reuven Bracha, the head of the community’s emergency security team. “We started to get organized on our own and succeeded in stabilizing a basic line of defense for ourselves. That was a very intense week.”

But people who have not been able to obtain the necessary equipment or simply cannot afford it, are stuck. “I’m still lacking three protective vests,” says one local security chief (whose name we won’t mention so as not to reveal the location of his community). “If there is some sort of incident, the members of the security squads will have to grab magazines with their hands and run.”

We repeatedly heard complaints about an acute shortage of ammunition, but on the other hand, in some cases far more sophisticated, heavier weapons were supplied than might have been expected. Some communities have received MAG machine guns, among them even pastoral Kochav Yair.

“They gave us a MAG but only 460 rounds,” says a member of a security squad from another border community. “That’s a joke – a MAG fires 600 to 1,200 rounds a minute. What are going to do with 460 bullets?”

Kobi Avraham, the commander of the security squad of Kibbutz Kfar Ruppin – spitting distance from the Jordanian border – takes a different view. He’s not upset at having to scrounge around for ammunition and equipment (“It’s a form of Israeli moonlighting”), he’s not particularly worried about the condition of the border fence (“There are spotters, too”) and he thinks that, despite the fact that there is room for improvement, the security situation in his sector has actually been enhanced since the war broke out. A former bodyguard with a lot of experience in the security realm, Avraham is more concerned about the excessive arming of the Israeli public at large and the troubles that could cause.

For one, Dekel Yosef, head of security on Moshav Yardena, which also abuts the Jordanian border, is far less sanguine. “If I were a terrorist, I would enter this place,” he says simply.

In other communities around here people say you’re lucky, because the Jordan River is an obstacle that protects you.

“Forget it. The water comes up to your hips. Come over here, we can shake the fence, wait a bit, make some coffee, have a barbecue, and the army won’t arrive. It’s a matter of time before a terrorist squad will infiltrate the moshav. In my opinion, it will happen on my watch. Any squad that enters won’t even need to organize a charge – within a minute and a half they’re at the houses.”

In the meantime, the generally heightened level of anxiety is beginning to spill over into the rest of the country. Even on Moshav Gimzo, which is not really a frontier community, and is a lot farther from the Green Line than Modi’in or Kfar Sava, a major furor erupted when an estimated 10 to 15 all-terrain vehicles arrived on a Friday afternoon earlier this month, made a ruckus and played loud songs in Arabic in the moshav’s fields. Someone also claimed to having seen a Palestinian flag waving in the breeze. A local resident named Dvir Spiegel, a musician, related that this was enough for him and his two children, aged 13 and 11, to go outside with knives, “ready to do battle,” in his words. “We alerted the security squad,” he said later, in a radio interview. “We felt like it was Kfar Azza 2. That we were being raided.”

Avraham from Kfar Ruppin relates that he received a surprising phone call relating to security issues – from someone in Metropolitan Tel Aviv. “Someone asked if they could consult with me about a security squad they were setting up,” he says. “He told me he lives in Ganei Tikva, near Tel Aviv, in a complex of five buildings with a park in the middle. I gave him all the advice I had; I explained what to do. But at the end of the conversation I said, ‘Can I tell you something personal? You’re off the wall, ‘bro.’”

It’s impossible to say now whether Israel’s relatively quiet borders will remain that way until the war ends. But what is certain is that the people who live in those areas will be in a totally different place by then.

“We will all need therapy at the end of this period,” says Eitan Ronen, from Kadesh Barnea on the Egyptian border. “Even when we end our guard shift, it’s not like we fall into a nice sound sleep. Some people simply go back to their positions. Do you get it? We’re in a type of trauma.”

In Hefer Valley there is concern about what will happen after the war ends. Yad Hana’s security “is based on volunteers,” Maya Yaron says. “Most of them didn’t get an emergency call-up order. I have a front gate, a back one, a command center. People will soon run out of steam and go back to their old routines. I don’t know who will guard us or how we’ll be guarded.”

Bracha, the neighbor from Bat Hefer, left his private business – he sells dental equipment – and is volunteering full-time to defend his community. He’s not even been formally mobilized. “We understood that if we don’t safeguard ourselves, no one will,” he says. “At the moment, the army is here, we’re here, all’s well. But what will happen on the day after? That’s our greatest fear.”

Asked about the security squads’ shortage of ammunition and weapons, tensions along the Jordan border and the deep concerns of residents near the Egypt border, among other issues – the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit offered this response: “IDF forces are active and will continue to act day and night to defend Israel’s borders in general, and the Jordan and Egypt borders in particular, against a variety of scenarios, among them scenarios of terrorist infiltration. Since the beginning of the war, all fronts have been reinforced with combatants and combat equipment. Combat equipment is provided based on the operational needs of the security squads. Any report regarding a shortage of equipment is carefully investigated and taken care of accordingly. The bolstering of forces after the war [along the borders] will be considered in accordance with the situation assessment at that time.”