(Tze’elim) After sixteen days of installation and excitement, silence reigns in the main fortified position of the Israeli infantry, on the edge of the Gaza Strip. An abnormal silence characteristic of waiting.
This sandy ground in the middle of the fields was transformed into a parking lot for around 500 armored vehicles and Merkava tanks of the Israeli army, stationed in around fifteen columns of around ten vehicles each, observed AFP.
The leading machines are adorned with the blue and white flag with the star. The soldiers of these units, in their non-tactical uniform, are mainly occupied with the interior and exterior maintenance of the machines. A water and fuel refueling station was set up aside.
This entire first line is protected by an immense trench, two kilometers long, dug by military engineering machines, one of the most crucial units of the Israeli operation, the one which prepares the ground for the incursion and returns to first with its immense machines.
“Military engineering is essential, without us, no one enters Gaza,” explains D., a serving soldier from unit 601 of the military engineering corps, testifying anonymously like any soldier without supervision from the spokesperson for the army.
“There are a lot of obstacles, the enemy is spraying rockets and other things that I cannot detail, to prevent us from progressing,” explains the man who holds a position linked to mine clearance.
No more GPS
The general staff claims to be “ready” for a ground incursion, the next announced phase of the Israeli military operation launched against Hamas after the attacks of October 7 which left more than 1,400 dead and some 220 hostages in Israel, according to the Israeli record.
The decision now remains in the hands of the government and the American ally.
Among these very concrete preparations, Israel had Google deactivate the navigation functions of Google Map and Waze throughout the southern militarized zone, closed to civilians, as well as in Gaza.
All devices are located by default at Tel Aviv airport, 150 km away, or in Cairo, AFP journalists noted.
To reach the Tze’elim base, the largest military base in the south of the country, located near Beersheva, you just have to follow the traffic jam.
For kilometers, tourist buses, family cars, tanks and army jeeps form an endless convoy to the entrance to this training base, a real city, secret defense, in the middle of the desert.
Tze’elim is known for housing a replica of certain neighborhoods of Gaza, including mosque and minaret, used for simulations of urban combat.
The last Israeli ground incursion into Gaza dates back to 2014.
In Tze’elim, the soldiers today estimate to be several “tens of thousands”, at a time when the army has recalled 360,000 fighters and has 169,500 soldiers under contract or in military service.
“And it’s half as much as last week, since many are on the ground”, namely on the edge of the Gaza Strip, 20 km further, explains a senior officer on condition of anonymity.
The families of conscripts come to deliver meals or share leave, sitting on camping chairs along the road.
The powder ”
At the entrance to the base, Omer, 23, an artillery reservist, searches for the network to find the friend who is taking him on 24-hour leave.
“I have been cut off from everything for 14 days. Two weeks in the field, shooting day and night,” explains the artilleryman, with a bob and dirty face, showing the earplugs and their cord tangled with an Indian necklace worn on the khaki cotton uniform.
A civilian yoga teacher, he was on an internship in northern India when he received his call-up to the war.
Since then, he has described “impossible” nights in the sounds of cannons and in what the soldiers call in their slang “powder”: the dust caused by the passage of armored vehicles in the sand of the Negev desert.
The timetable for the land operation is a total unknown for him, as for his command.
” The worst is […] not even having time to grieve. I have two friends from Nova (the rave where some 270 people died, according to the Israeli toll, Editor’s note) killed and a friend of a friend kidnapped,” explains the Israeli soldier.
“When this is all over, we’ll have to face this too. But there, we don’t have time,” adds the young reservist.
Since October 7, Israel has relentlessly shelled the Gaza Strip in response to the attack by the Islamist movement in power in the small territory. More than 5,700 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed since the Israeli bombing began, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health.