Givati Brigade Commander Col. Ofer Winter knows the Gaza Strip well. Two decades of fighting Hamas have made him one of the IDF's officers most familiar with this complicated patch of earth. When he talks about a range of threats, he knows what he is talking about. However determined and persistent his men may be, he knows that the threat of tunnels from Gaza can be solved only through deterrence.
Khirbat Hiza'a is located opposite Kibbutz Nir Oz. We ask him if the people living on the kibbutz will be able to sleep in peace. "I think so," he answers, "but I'm not sure that the mission will be successfully completed by finding all the tunnel shafts; the Palestinians must realize that it's just not worthwhile for them. When the residents of Khirbat Hiza'a return home and see what has happened here, with all of Hamas's sound and fury, they'll get the message."
In the heart of Khirbat Hiza'a, between a small mound covering an APC and an abandoned house currently serving as an IDF position, he show us a message he got from his family. Nothing fazes Winter; he's in no hurry to get out. "There's a rats nest here, and we need more time to do our job," he says.
Just a short time before, the sirens went off in the Dan region, signaling yet another missile barrage against Tel Aviv. We ask him if he's frustrated. "We can't stop the launches against Tel Aviv until we can reach everywhere," he admits honestly, "but I'm not responsible for the end of the campaign; I'm dealing with tactical solutions, when they are needed. No force can stop us. We can defeat them; it's obvious that we can. It's easy. The Palestinians have prepared themselves for this event for years, but we can overcome them. We're capable of it, and the fact is that we're doing it. The most important thing is to grab them in the right place.
"I had the chance to tell the prime minister that there are two kinds of poisonous animals in Israel: snakes and scorpions. You grab a snake by the head, but if you grab a scorpion by the head, he'll sting you. The trick is to know where to grab, and here I think we've grabbed them in the right place. If we go on, I think we'll succeed in grabbing them in all sorts of other places, and we'll wipe them out."
Meanwhile, he continues clearing the abandoned village. A fresh incident occurs in the background: paratroopers enter a house and find six terrorists. There is an exchange of fire, and all six terrorists are killed. Winter is satisfied with the results of the incident - our forces suffered no casualties.
There is a great deal of work to be done, and he is asking for time. He is not the only commander in the area who asked for time at the end of the week: "I hope they don't stop me now, because I have a lot more to do here, and in other places, too. How many days? I don't want to commit myself. As far as I'm concerned, it can be a few months, but it doesn't depend on me. We can't live in a country under threat of missiles and tunnels that reach into our communities. That's insufferable. That's a red line. This action was necessary. I think it's a war, and that must be understood. The minute we use all our tools and means, it's a war, not an operation. I knew that as soon as I started doing something whose end could not be foreseen. Even now, I don't know when I'll finish it."
Col. Winter is talking about a clear unambiguous victory. "We're winning a great victory. After they discover the damage and the true number of their dead, and see that everything they built has collapsed, there will be no doubt about our victory."
The destroyed village
The fighting in Gaza will end, and relative quiet will return, even to the crowded, stressed, and explosive Gaza Strip. Many of its people, who listened to the IDF's calls to leave before the bombardment began, will return to destroyed homes. The IDF hopes they will demand an accounting from Hamas for the disaster and destruction it brought on them. There is no other way.
The village of Khirbat Hiza'a in the southern Gaza Strip is destroyed. To move around, you have to dodge between the ruins of buildings that were still standing only a week ago. Hamas, which made almost every home a foxhole, a war room, or a death trap for IDF soldiers, made those buildings targets for warplanes and other air force weapons. Others became targets for the infantry, which took control of the village at the beginning of the ground operations last Thursday, when the houses were used to fire anti-tank weapons at the troops.
Khirbat Hiza'a, a village of 13,000 people, is empty of civilians, after its people left during the 24 hours preceding the ground campaign. The hundreds remaining left after Givati forces under Winter's command, together with soldiers of the Paratroopers' Brigade, took control of the village. The IDF tells us that this village was one of the main Hamas strongholds in the southern Gaza Strip, held by one of its strongest brigades. In contrast to the other sectors, where most of the fighting took place in the outskirts of cities and villages, here the fighting took place deep within the village.
"The tunnel to Israel began at Khirbat Hiza'a"
Only ruins are left from the mosque in the center of the village. It was deliberately blown up by the engineering corps after Hamas used it in the fighting and to store its terrorist arms. "All the initial tunneling to Israel began here," Givati operations officer Major Yaron tells us. "It's only 500 meters from the first line of buildings in this village, and they're already in Israel."
The stench of bodies is in the air; it's an unmistakable odor. Hamas does not disclose the number of its fatalities in the fighting here against Israel, and the IDF conservatively estimates it at 250. No one can calculate how many dead are lying under the ruins of Khirbat Hiza'a. Meanwhile, thousands of people from the town are refugees in Ibsanim, not far away, in the villages south of Khan Yunis. The echoes of the explosions reach them, and many of them have nothing to return to.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on July 27, 2014
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