There are snipers and stuff â but there were two things that were particularly hard for me. One is that almost every single house is booby-trapped â even with families inside! Because it looks good on the news [against Israel] to have a whole family killed⦠the people are forced to stay there, or sometimes they stay on their own â this is insane, we can't comprehend this... It's scary kicking in a door and thinking that the entire house might collapse or blow up on you.
Fear of Being Snatched
But even more scary is the fact that there are tunnels everywhere in Gaza â not just the ones that people know about in southern Gaza. I don't know how many there are, but there are tunnels between houses and headquarters and the like, not only for reinforcements, but also because one of their main goals is to kidnap soldiers. That is really terrifying. You see a bush and suddenly the bush moves and a hand sticks out, trying to grab a soldier's leg and pull him inside. It happened a lot⦠Or we're in a house trying to get some sleep, and you don't know if a floor tile will suddenly move and someone will try to grab you. So on the one hand, you try to sleep very little, but we also work very closely together, looking after each other, helping each other, and certainly not doing anything by oneselfâ¦
The Old-Man-and-the-Cane Trick
The top Hamas guys are dug-in and hiding pretty well under hospitals and schools, and they don't even know what's going on outside. We've cut their phone lines, including cell phones, and they communicate by sending children with notes to each other; we've caught kids carrying notes. We once saw an old man hobbling down the street with a cane, looking very bent over and wretched, and when he saw Israeli soldiers, he suddenly threw away the cane, ran over to them and tried to blow himself up on them; the soldiers were able to shoot him first.
No Concern for Life
The mindset of the enemy is so alien to us; by us, the death of any one soldier is terrible, a national tragedy â but by them, it seems that they want as many deaths as possible. In Israel, schools even dozens of kilometers from Gaza are closed in order to minimize the risk, which is pretty small â but in Gaza, where there are bombs all over the place all the time, we've seen kindergartens filled with 150 or 200 children, and the kindergartens are booby trapped! They even shoot rockets from inside mosques and these placesâ¦
Fear of Being Snatched
But even more scary is the fact that there are tunnels everywhere in Gaza â not just the ones that people know about in southern Gaza. I don't know how many there are, but there are tunnels between houses and headquarters and the like, not only for reinforcements, but also because one of their main goals is to kidnap soldiers. That is really terrifying. You see a bush and suddenly the bush moves and a hand sticks out, trying to grab a soldier's leg and pull him inside. It happened a lot⦠Or we're in a house trying to get some sleep, and you don't know if a floor tile will suddenly move and someone will try to grab you. So on the one hand, you try to sleep very little, but we also work very closely together, looking after each other, helping each other, and certainly not doing anything by oneselfâ¦
The Old-Man-and-the-Cane Trick
The top Hamas guys are dug-in and hiding pretty well under hospitals and schools, and they don't even know what's going on outside. We've cut their phone lines, including cell phones, and they communicate by sending children with notes to each other; we've caught kids carrying notes. We once saw an old man hobbling down the street with a cane, looking very bent over and wretched, and when he saw Israeli soldiers, he suddenly threw away the cane, ran over to them and tried to blow himself up on them; the soldiers were able to shoot him first.
No Concern for Life
The mindset of the enemy is so alien to us; by us, the death of any one soldier is terrible, a national tragedy â but by them, it seems that they want as many deaths as possible. In Israel, schools even dozens of kilometers from Gaza are closed in order to minimize the risk, which is pretty small â but in Gaza, where there are bombs all over the place all the time, we've seen kindergartens filled with 150 or 200 children, and the kindergartens are booby trapped! They even shoot rockets from inside mosques and these placesâ¦