Middle of the night. All around an absolute stunner. The Savannah vehicle drops us off near a steep hill, and from there we continue on foot. Lt. Stav Rotenberg, SMP of the northern company, leads us in the dark. The eyes refuse to get used to it, we neither see nor are seen. Lights flicker on the horizon. Only a kilometer away from us is Gaza. says Lieutenant Rotenberg while walking. Although the road is short, it is winding. The sound of heavy breathing blends in with the sound of the wind and the howling of the jackals in the background. After a while we arrive at the position of Phoenix Team 2 from the 414th Battalion and join the night ambush.
Most of the operational activities of the 414th Battalion, the collection battalion of the Gaza Division, remain in the dark, but in the “Dawn” operation last August, the battalion’s outstanding contribution became clear. Recently, at the “Southern Shield” ceremony, led by the commander of the Southern Command Major General Eliezer Toledano, the battalion even received an award of excellence for its work in the last year in general and in the operation in particular. “‘Dawn’ was a very successful operation by the IDF and the battalion in particular,” says Rotenberg. “The award is for the work of the battalion in the operation: both for the mobile formations, which are the combat teams, and also for the stationary formations, which include all the observation teams that sit in posts and observatories. The opening blow of ‘Dawn’, the simultaneous bombing of the positions, was greatly assisted by this formation.”
In his words, Rotenberg refers to the air force attack in the Gaza Strip on August 5, in which the head of the northern military branch of the Islamic Jihad, Taysir Jabari, was eliminated. The information provided by the collection battalion contributed greatly to the success of the attack.
Even tonight, the fighters we joined are working on the border of the Gaza Strip to gather information in various ways and to assist in the division’s operational effort. The team makes ambushes, secures the crossing forces with various means and characterizes enemy detection in the strip, using advanced technologies, crossing drones and missiles, observations and more. “In the end we are a battalion that integrates the entire visual intelligence system against the Gaza Strip,” says Rotenberg. “If intelligence has ears, then we are the eyes in the field. We collect and integrate all the information about what Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the other entities are doing.”
The position we reach is hidden among dry bushes that blend in with the color of the camouflaged cylia. Her height is lower than them, and her length is about 3 meters. “That way, during the day, when the enemy looks here, he won’t see us, because we blend in with the ground,” explains Rotenberg.
From the distance where we are, the voices from Gaza are clearly audible. “We always hear the weddings, the shooting in the air from the weddings or the muezzin at four in the morning,” says Lt. Omri Edelstein, the team commander. And Rothenberg adds: “Muezzin, trances, Omar Adam.”
According to Edelstein, they have been in the narrow and low position for 24 hours, and they are scheduled to stay there for another 24 hours. They operate in absolute silence, bent over and covered with a blanket. “The entrance is in the dark, it’s important that we don’t arrive in daylight,” says Edelstein, and Rotenberg adds: “It’s considered a light activity, an activity for beginners. I was also in such a position for five days. There’s nothing to do. It’s a challenging sector, with many operational situations. A team can stay In the field even for seven days, and the expectation is that they will not talk to us at all.” Edelstein adds that they take all the equipment they need for the duration of the ambush with them on their backs. “Even for long duration operations, everything is on the backs of the fighters,” he says.
From zero to a hundred
In the dark it’s hard to see, but the soldiers survey the sector for us, and we realize that we are right in the middle, on the line between Rafah (in the south) and Beit Hanun (in the north). In front of us is the outskirts of Gaza. “Near the fence there is a lot of agricultural land,” says Rotenberg. “We are now seeing the poorest area in the Strip.”
Deputy Stav Rotenberg (photo: Aloni Mor)I bend down and crawl into the position. The feeling is that I entered a parallel universe. Inside the small hut I see the builder, who is responsible for choosing the location, building the position and camouflage, the navigator who has to be led to the position without the enemy even knowing that the fighters were there, the drone operator, the observer and the medic. Their role is to assimilate in the field, collect findings, decipher them and act on them. “A large part of the team’s occupation is throwing grenades in Gaza,” says Rotenberg. “We throw grenades at all kinds of people who approach the fence, that we don’t want them to approach. This happens using the drones.”
The Combat Collection Corps, formerly known as the Field Intelligence Corps, was established in 2001 and has been shrouded in mystery ever since. “Most things happen at night, so these are the hours when you have to be sharp,” shares Sergeant Roi Golan. “It’s also less pleasant to sit here in the sun, but mainly because in the dark our abilities are more apparent.”
How do you maintain sharpness in such an ambush?
“We make substitutions and try to break the routine, but mostly we just get used to it.”
I see your eyes don’t leave the screen.
“Because it’s a matter of a moment. If I didn’t pay attention for a moment, I could miss someone passing by the window, and then miss the whole activity.”
What is difficult about this job?
“The main difficulty we experienced at the beginning was the static, but like I said, you get used to it in the end. Enlisting as a combat collection fighter is a little different than enlisting in a normal combat role, and I was very happy to receive the assignment. Our routine is very different. The nature of the activities is different. If an infantryman Normal makes guards and patrols and waits for the moment something happens, so we are the moment something happens. We need to bring a picture at any time. The activities are always running, there are no rest days.”
“I didn’t really know the corps before, but after I arrived and understood what it was, I was really happy to be here,” says Sgt. Maor Shahar, the medic on the team. “For us, the work is very varied because we never know what will happen.”
Maor Shahar (Photo: Aloni Mor)“Our slogan is ‘Today is the war,’ here in Gaza we never rest,” adds Rotenberg. “Even when we are calm, we are always alert and ready. We also saw this in ‘Dawn’, one quiet moment and suddenly there is a click and we jump from zero to a hundred.”
Where were you when the promotion started?
Rotenberg: “We were in the field. We had some kind of intelligence alert, following which we positioned ourselves for activity. Then, when the head of the Islamic Jihad in Samaria was arrested, we already understood that there was an event that was about to happen. It is very easy to interpret it in the field. We see a direct connection between what is happening in Judea and Samaria and in the territories A and what is happening in Gaza. For example, when a prisoner goes on a hunger strike, we feel it here. Sometimes it will be in disturbances that develop on the fence. Hundreds and even thousands of people can come to demonstrate near the fence. Or it will be expressed in alerts that pop up in the sector, in the enemy’s desire to harm our forces, when this desire It is of course always present, but suddenly it becomes more real. Or sometimes we hear about machine guns being fired in the direction of Netiv HaTara or shooting in the direction of Sderot.”
Golan: “That’s how it is here. One day it can look like this, as a relatively calm observation that lasts 48 hours, and the day after that we will be kicked out of the base because there is an infiltration of terrorists or an operation will suddenly break out. We have already experienced two.”
We sit for a long time inside the position, and I understand how Sisyphean and challenging the operation of the battalion is. While we are talking, we look from the position on a certain roof, and the fighters explain to me that their job is to notice everything.
Golan: “There are times when we receive intelligence and go into an activity that we understand that any action we see will be abnormal. There are detections where you say to yourself, ‘My goal is not to see anything,’ and if you do see something – then you realize that there is a crime here, there is an exception here and something is happening Not good”.
And what if a family decided to go up to the roof now?
“These are locations where we don’t see families. If we see someone, it will be from Hamas or from Jihad. And there can be cases like now, when I see something and I have to understand if I see a family or an activity in disguise. This is where our sharpness comes in: when I have to understand if it is Someone is hanging laundry or hiding an activity.”
Rotenberg: “Normally, the building in front of us is a residential building, and we see families and children playing on the roof and running. They are just like us. But in a campaign, anyone who is close to the fence, flies away from it. Most of the buildings we see now will be empty. Therefore, everyone who is seen in the search during The campaign, we will suspect him.”
What do we do with this suspicion?
“First of all, we do closures, whether it’s using a drone, a balloon or a stationary array.”
To understand if this is really a suspicion of unusual activity or an innocent case?
“Yes”.
And from there it continues to the next levels?
“Yes. ‘Dawn’, for example, was a very fast operation, and it was mainly of the Air Force. But, as collection fighters, we feel the most significant when we know that the locations we criminalized explode the day after. Then we realize that we brought this picture. In ‘Shomer Hahomet’, let’s say, we have a list of 33 locations that our company blamed, and bombed during the operation. So I say to myself: Wow, 33 locations, that fighters sat in positions for thousands of hours to find, and thanks to that we took them down.”
How do you differentiate between Hamas and Jihad?
“We have means of identification. They also have different markers like different flags. On the fence we will see positions with Hamas flags and positions with Jihad flags. If someone sets up a new position on the fence, we need to know who it is, if it is from Hamas or from the Jihad, and what is the purpose of the post? Is it an observation post that records what we are doing or a Hamas restraint post – a kind of border guard post that has people on behalf of Hamas who want to keep them from going near the fence, so that in the event of disturbances, for example, people don’t do things in the heat of the moment that Hamas doesn’t I want them to.”
What is the scariest moment you have encountered?
Golan: “The operations are always the scariest. We don’t always have a protected position like we have now. After all, if anti-tank fire or anti-tank fire starts now, there’s not much we can do about it.”
Is this net above us what protects us?
Rotenberg: “Yes, and we also have sheets that hide us from the enemy’s thermal means.”
Golan: “If shooting starts now, it’s just the skill of the soldiers. We’ll have to look for the safest place to lie down.”
Rotenberg: “We are confident that we concealed the position as best as possible.”
And yet, how do you deal with fear?
Golan: “Obviously there is always the fear, but we need to know how to trust ourselves, and we need to know how to trust the position. To know that we did everything so that we wouldn’t be seen.”
What was the strangest case you encountered?
Rotenberg: “Wow. A Turkish soldier. We had an incident on the fence where a man tried to cross, and the team was in the area. They jumped us to the incident and told us that no one could identify him. In the end we picked up a drone, scanned, and in the end we discovered a man lying on the ground and making movements . We actually saw a drunken man saying hello to a drone. We realized that he was probably drugged. It was also a comical moment.”
How does the story end?
“We arrested a suspect.”
Strength and composure
According to the IDF’s changing concept of combat in recent years, even the fighters in the field know how to say that the goal is to reduce the contact of our forces with the enemy and let the technological devices do their thing. One of the means that allows the collection fighters to get even closer to what is happening inside Gaza is drones. “The beauty of a drone He is very dynamic,” says Edelstein. “Consider that there is a force in the field that is available, fast and can reach any point in the sector. Certainly compared to the Air Force planes, which are heavy and cumbersome and have to come from Palmachim or Tel Nof or other places.”
What prevents a drone from Gaza from glancing over us right now?
Rotenberg: “There is an aerial control system that will thwart him.”
Edelstein: “The drones coming from Gaza are really a significant threat, whether they are trying to gather information or whether they are trying to harm our forces.”
Inside the station I also meet Sergeant Dima Danilchik, a lone soldier from Belarus who immigrated to Israel in 2015, when he was only 15 years old.
Dima Danilchik (Photo: Aloni Mor)Why did you decide to go up alone?
“I wanted to study, to succeed in life. It was a very brave decision, even dangerous. But in life you will always come across such decisions, which you will have to choose. We never know in advance whether it will be right or wrong.”
Your family is still in Belarus. Do you feel torn between the two places?
“Today it is very clear to me that this is my place. These are the most significant moments in my life, to serve and protect people and the State of Israel. It really feels like a mission, it is really a great privilege to protect this country.”
Any thoughts on the war going on in Ukraine?
“During activities like this, let’s say, I think about what’s happening there and get scratched by it because I understand that I can’t do anything and that things happen there that I can’t catch, like cases where little girls are raped.”
Are you talking about it here?
Golan: “Yes. This is the best place to talk about it, here everything comes out. No cell phones, no TV.”
Rotenberg: “We are also very cohesive. We are very connected to each other. It is a true friendship that cannot be described. My family is here, not in Ramat Gan.”
Edelstein: “The ambushes are a very experiential activity, it’s a formation with the fighters that you don’t get anywhere else. Being here with three of my other fighters, regardless of the world outside, is very bonding. Of course there is also a command challenge here, because we have to maintain an operational routine and that It’s very difficult in a 48-hour or 96-hour operation. But we create rounds, and everyone has a role, and that’s how we maintain the routine.”
Rotenberg: “I really relate to his words, in the end we are here for the soldiers, and we need to transmit optimism and a good attitude, because everything comes down from the team commander down. If I broadcast that I am having a hard time in the activity, then it permeates everyone, the maturity has to come from the commanders. We see it In the field: When we radiate strength and composure, the soldiers can do their job in the best way, especially in difficult moments. And there are many difficult moments, because when you spend 96 hours in a position and missiles are fired over your head, and in communication you hear at every moment ‘absorption alertness’ – it requires Balance, discipline, composure and greatness of mind.”
Did this role excite you?
“Without a doubt. If I look back at myself on my enlistment day, I see a boy.”
Golan: “It’s like that with everyone.”
Rotenberg: “That’s what war gives you.”