In Khan Yunis, I came back to believe in the vision of the two states. Fact: Israel of the winter of 2023 is a country divided into two unequal parts: in the first part, everyone who is not in Gaza or on the northern border, everyone who is not regularly recruited or in the reserves, that is, almost all of us: and everyone is depressed, disturbed, arguing, quarreling and screaming at each other This, grumbling and complaining and spreading bad energy that contains different components: fear, astonishment, insult, defeatism, helplessness and clinical sourness.
The second part of Israel is the part at the front. On Monday I ran into him in Khan Yunis. These are Israelis of a different kind: they are full of energy and confidence in their abilities. They are united, smiling, imbued with faith and have a mission. They are calm, they don’t fight with each other but mainly help each other, take care of each other and if necessary then also save each other. Or this one. Last Monday, in Khan Yunis, with the most amazing reserves in the world, I realized that our situation inside Gaza is much better than it looks from Tel Aviv. Yes, also the day after the heavy disaster that broke us all apart.
Amit Segal and I were temporarily attached as “weakening reinforcements” to the 7029th Reserve Battalion of the 179th Brigade. I lost control of the numbers of battalions and brigades in the IDF a long time ago, so get this: the battalion has been fighting since the beginning of December in Khan Yunis as part of the brigade combat team of the 55th Brigade. What is a brigade 55? Shame on you: the liberators of the Kotel, the people of the canal, the climbers of the Shekif, the Gaza Stripers, etc. Paratroopers in the reserves.
What is the seesaw? The “Shakif Al Salkhani” center, in the central sector in southern Lebanon, rising to a height of 600 meters. The brigade advanced to it on foot within one night in the ground action in the Second Lebanon War. So these guys sent us. Another thing you should know today is that the event of “paratroopers in the reserves” is over. or “armor in reserve”. Now they are all together. Because our paratroopers contained both Golani and Nahal and Givati and whatever you say, and also at least a company of tanks (Markave Mark 3), which made my day, and of course the lions of engineering with their Di-9 and all the required logistics. What do they know how to do inside Gaza ?Whatever they say to them. You can hurt them, but you can’t stop them.
IDF forces in Khan Yunis (photo: IDF spokesman)
No nation has such reserves. So, for example, the Major General: Reserve Lieutenant Colonel Uri Ron, 44 years old from Tel Aviv. His pride in the fact that he didn’t shower for 45 days straight. Married plus 2, the lioness keeps the family, Chief Operating Officer of Protarom who recently received the Shi’an Tel Aviv Award from Maron Huldai on reserve days. 130 days a year. Think about it for a moment. More than a third of the year the man is not at home. He is in the reserves. And he doesn’t play in the reserves. He doesn’t sit in a room with computers and fluorescent lights. He fights.
All the people of Israel are there. In all its complexity, colors, nuances, friends and problems. I was surprised by the number of Tel Avivians/bourgeois/urbanites. I was not surprised by the always impressive amount of more or less knitted domes. and the settlers. and the kibbutzniks. They don’t talk about politics. They have no reception in Khan Yunis, and that’s a good thing. We hear a bit of the edge of the IDF’s waves, and that’s it. We don’t need more. The highlight was the encounter, at short range, with Hadar. Not Hadar HaCarmel, Hadar Hod Hasharon. It turns out that the regiment’s liaison (the regimental liaison officer) is Hadar who lives in the adjacent building To mine in Hod Hasharon. The guys call her “the first lady of the battalion”, and rightly so. She is also the only lady. “Yes, I’m the only woman here,” she says with a smile in the middle of Khan Yunis, “and neither I nor anyone else has any problem with that.”
She has a 3-year-old child at home and a husband in permanent service. So where is the boy? At grandparents. It’s been like this since the beginning of the war. And she has no complaints. Not to her, and not to anyone else in the school complex where the “guard” of the battalion was located, where the fighters manage their routine between the attacks and the various activities. The tankmen sleep in the tanks (from experience, it’s not comfortable), the infantrymen improvise other solutions. There is coffee, there is backgammon, there is a brotherhood of fighters and there is one common request to all of them: “Say at home not to arrest us. Don’t bring us back. Let us finish the job. We must not stop, we must not let go, we are here because we have to do it, we are strong and hope that you in the home front will also be strong.”
We asked the MP what he lacks the most here. If we were to grant him one wish, what would he ask for. “Showers,” he said. I told him no problem. This is the people of Israel. In a minute someone will put a water tank on a truck, attach pipes and let’s go , will arrive. He hastened to fold up. “No no, no need, we are arranged, everything is fine.” Another officer, Roy Rothstein, who revealed to me in secret that his father is the legendary Prof. Zeev Rothstein, used his wish to request that all the abductees return home. Many Join this wish. Yes, it bothers the fighters. They know the abductees are around. They can’t be far away. It’s frustrating, but it is what it is.
Then we went up to the observation deck. I tried to find the sea, colleague Amit Segal tried to find Gush Katif (and rebuild it). We learned that there was not a single hospital in all of Gaza that was not armed, loaded with weapons and ammunition, shafts, tunnels and means of warfare. Almost all mosques are like that. There are luxurious villas with jacuzzis on every floor, but there is also abject poverty and terrible overcrowding. Gaza is not what we were told. Now we are teaching her that we are too, not what she was told.