The Haruv reconnaissance unit is prepared to move into Gaza City, supporting IDF ground operations. Photo / Getty Images
Just a few hundred metres from Israel’s eastern border with Gaza, a specialist IDF (Israel Defence Forces) commando unit is packed and ready to move into Gaza City.
The Haruv reconnaissance unit is a small but fast-moving group of “warriors” who have been operating in and out of Gaza since the war started almost two years ago.
Specialised in counter-terrorism and undercover work, they are now supporting the first “probing phase” of ground operations in the Strip’s capital, launched by the IDF earlier this week.
Their role within the 900th Kfir Infantry Brigade is to flush out Hamas cells and infrastructure, specifically booby traps and tunnels, where bombs alone cannot be used because it would put civilians or Israel’s estimated 20 surviving hostages at risk.
“We do the complicated missions, where we need to be most precise,” Major D, the unit’s 29-year-old commander, tells the Telegraph at their dusty base not far from Sderot in southern Israel.
“We’ve been in the neighbourhoods of Gaza City and now we stand ready for the centre. We understand the mission and believe in it. We will do whatever it takes.”
The IDF is expert at matching journalists with its soldiers and Major D and his 20-year-old sergeant, “Y,” are fluent in English, secular and earnest.
If, like other IDF troops the Telegraph has met on the Gaza border, they have phones full of images glorifying war, they are not sharing them.
The unit’s gear is packed and ready to go. There are vests holding knives, grenades and magazines of ammunition for their M4 carbines, and Bergens holding rations and specialist kit, including night vision equipment, drones, medical equipment and explosives.
In the drivers’ seats of their stripped-down Humvees, well-worn kit sits ready to step into like you might see in a British fire station.
They can be in Gaza in minutes and to Gaza City within an hour via the various military “corridors” the IDF has carved out there.
“We can go at day or night. Sometimes it is just notice of an hour or two. Other times, it’s days, and we are able to rehearse a specific mission,” says the commander.
Armour is being moved in to circle Gaza City, while the Navy provides cover from the sea and civilians moved out. A siege will then be mounted and units like the Haruv will be dispatched to clear the area street by street, house to house.
Typically, they are running missions once every two weeks but are capable of more. Major D says some last just hours – “in and out” – but others stretch to days or even weeks. Each pack contains supplies for 48 hours’ survival without support.
The small quadcopter drones they carry are a “game-changer”, says Major D, enabling them to “see everything” and avoiding having to “put your head up”.
Most are used for tight reconnaissance but they have others that can drop munitions. None, he says, “fire bullets”, but adds that that is probably just a matter of time.
It’s dangerous work. The unit has lost three men since the war started – “the best we have”. Two died after triggering Hamas booby traps and the third in “face-to-face fighting” with Hamas gunmen.
Like most of the forward IDF fighting units, the platoon typically operates with a dozen or so men. Once at their designated position, they dig into shattered homes and buildings and establish a “no-go zone” around it. Anyone crossing the line becomes a target.
The tactic has become deeply controversial, with reports of hundreds of Gazan civilians being killed after inadvertently wandering into such areas, causing not just terrible collateral damage but “moral injury” to the troops involved.
“I saw the bodies of two children, maybe aged 8 or 10. There was blood everywhere, lots of signs of gunfire, I knew it was all on me, that I did this,” one soldier from a different unit told the Israeli media this week.
“I wanted to throw up. After a few minutes, the company commander arrived and said coldly, as if he wasn’t a human being, ‘They entered an extermination zone, it is their fault, this is what war is like’.”
Major D says that he and his men “do everything we can” to reduce civilian casualties.
“We use tech and intelligence to make sure citizens leave. Even where they stay, we have [non-lethal] methods of getting them to leave,” he says.
Yet the balance remains fine. Last year, the unit was attacked by 18 Hamas fighters who emerged out of a concealed tunnel within their protective zone.
They were caught by surprise but “from the moment it started, we had heroes and a warrior instinct”, says Major D.
The Hamas fighters were armed with RPGs, a PK belt-fed machine gun and Kalashnikovs, and the firefight ended with close quarters combat – “10 to 15m” – in a high-rise building of the type the IDF is now bringing down in Gaza City.
“We destroyed 10 of them and eight ran away,” said Major D. “I hope and believe we will find them one day. This is what I mean when I say we know our mission.”
Just two of the unit’s soldiers were injured in the incident, one moderately, one lightly.
The Haruv, like the IDF as a whole, has vast technical superiority over Hamas. It is protected not just by air and naval cover from afar but by finely detailed intelligence and heavy armour on the ground.
Nevertheless, they are fighting an insurgent guerrilla force which knows the ground better and excels at ambush and sabotage.
Last week, four IDF soldiers were killed when Hamas fighters snuck up on a tank in Sheikh Radwan in northern Gaza. They shot one of its crew who had opened the hatch for air at six in the morning before dropping in a grenade and killing the others.
And on Thursday four more soldiers were killed and three others wounded in a roadside bomb attack in Rafah in the south. It’s an area that was supposed to be safe but Hamas is repositioning as the squeeze continues on Gaza City.
Major D says of all the risks, maintaining the unit’s attention in the field is the most important.
“We work on it a lot, through training, through rotas, through talking. Everyone understands when they are on [watch] it’s his family he is protecting. No one dreams.”
Family is a theme. He believes “less in the strict and the hard” to instil discipline and more on ensuring his men are well looked after in the field. Tricks, he says, include “good food, sweet drinks, and lots of coffee” – even portable “air conditioning”.
“I try to command like I would want someone to command my sister or my brothers,” he says.
Yet there is clearly some stress in the unit, as there is throughout the IDF.
Two years is a long war by Israeli standards and the juxtaposition of the horrors of Gaza with the normality of Tel Aviv just an hour and half’s drive away can make things worse.
“The hardest thing is saying goodbye to home”, says Sergeant Y. “But I’ve got the team here and people I love. We know we are capable of what we are asked and morale is high. It’s about country and friendship.”
Sergeant Y, like others in the unit, is pleased to talk. The men believe they are fighting a “just war” but are conscious that much of the rest of the world no longer thinks so.
“We are fighting not just with weapons but morals and ethics,” he says.
Major D will not be drawn on the wider strategy for Gaza City. Senior insiders say the strategy is to continue with aerial bombardment of the high ground while encouraging the evacuation of the entire civilian population.
“Population evacuation is a challenge, and if it works one can expect full siege on the depopulated areas – no water or aid,” one former senior IDF military strategist told the Telegraph.
“The question is whether [Donald] Trump will shorten [Benjamin] Netanyahu’s leash or continue to comment from the sidelines.”
Major D and his team are a long way below this level of decision-making. They are the hard end, an operational unit that takes orders.
“I get a mission and I do it the best I can. I trust the people above me,” he says.
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