Yehuda Wald, a reserve soldier in the 55th Brigade who recently fought in the Gaza Strip described what he saw in Gaza in an interview on Galey Yisrael.

“We discovered a huge mass of tunnels – they prepared them for years. They took the funds donated to them to build a massive combat system. There’s no yard of a house without a tunnel shaft, no plot of land without underground tunnels. Every step you take, every street you enter – the level of threats is insane.”

“That’s why the progress there is cautious and slow. Every house has weapons. Every house we were in had something: intelligence, ammunition, propaganda materials – every house! You enter a house, and it’s booby-trapped. I didn’t open a single door in Gaza – you enter through the wall or the roof. It requires a lot of patience.”

“We beat them, all their ambushes and tricks – we dismantled them one by one. I think they were shocked by the depth the IDF reached. We entered very, very fast; the enemy was completely surprised. They didn’t know how to deal with this massive firepower – when a terrorist goes out and suddenly sees the IDF in its full force.”

“When you are there and see, for example, a scooter that was stolen from the Gaza border area – you realize that there’s a terrorist in this house who kidnapped and murdered our brothers. Even today, over 100 days after October 7th, we still think about and we must always remember it.”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)