For the past three weeks, the Israel Defense Forces’ 7th Armored Brigade combat team has been fighting on the outskirts of Gaza City to defeat Hamas’s Zeitoun Battalion.
If you wanted to be cynical, you could say that the troops should have an easy time of it — after all, they’ve done this before. This is the seventh time Israeli forces have attacked the neighborhood since the Palestinian terror group’s October 7, 2023, onslaught.
Only weeks after the Hamas invasion, the IDF Spokesperson’s Office released footage of the 36th Division fighting “to defeat the Hamas’s Zeitoun Battalion, one of the organization’s main battalions.”
“The 50th Battalion of the Nahal Brigade defeated the Zeitoun Battalion in the heart of Gaza City,” read (Hebrew link) a subsequent article in February 2024.
“There are terrorists here and even when we leave, there will be terrorists, but they will be few. Their ability to create command and control is very low,” the IDF battalion commander said at the time.
If those previous efforts had been as successful as some claimed, Israeli troops wouldn’t need to keep coming back.
The very fact that the IDF has to keep returning to areas in which it has already operated underlines how complex the challenge is — and perhaps, how misguided the Israeli approach was in the earlier chapters of the country’s longest war.
Today, after enjoying almost 10 months without having to face a concerted IDF maneuver, the Zeitoun Battalion stands at over 400 fighters. It has developed considerable skill at planting explosives, using unexploded IDF munitions to build improvised explosive devices (IEDs) that can destroy Merkava tanks. The troops of the 7th Brigade found seven such massive IEDs on a road next to the compound in which Brigade Commander Colonel “Shin” — who per IDF regulations can be named only by his first Hebrew initial — set up his headquarters.
Israeli intelligence believes that the Hamas battalion is under the impression that, since it still exists in force, it has defeated the IDF in each of the six previous times Israeli forces operated in the dense neighborhood.
Officers in the brigade combat team assured The Times of Israel on Thursday that this time, the result would be different.
The main reason, they insist, is that they are fighting in a new manner.
“The logic of Operation Gideon’s Chariots is a more carefully supervised, systematic logic, which defines more precise goals that can be measured in the field,” said “Shin.”
A central element of the operation is the slow dismantling of neighborhoods in which Hamas operated.
“The focus on the tunnels underground, and on the booby-trapped buildings above ground, allows us to guarantee that at the end of the mission, it will be very hard for the enemy to return to this territory,” Shin explained.
“We can’t guarantee 100 percent that the enemy who fled won’t return to a certain piece of territory, but without its combat infrastructure, we will be able to destroy them during their attempts to return.”
Israel has come under withering criticism on many aspects of its fight against Hamas. The careful destruction of entire neighborhoods is in the spotlight now as international human rights organizations and the United Nations condemn the operation.
“As the occupying power, Israel must not destroy civilian property unless such destruction is rendered necessary by military operations,” said the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in a statement on the Zeitoun operation. “The widespread destruction of residential buildings in eastern and southern Gaza City does not appear to be required by imperative military necessity nor rendered absolutely necessary by military operations.”
Israeli officers told The Times of Israel that they were certain the tactic is legal and effective.
“Hamas decided to take all the homes in the Gaza Strip and turn them into terror infrastructure – there is no house where we didn’t find an explosive, Nukhba uniforms, weapons, RPG. There isn’t a house,” stressed Lt. Col. “Gimel,” commander of the 77th Armored Battalion. “The moment it decided to operate in that way, we had no choice but to destroy the infrastructure above ground in almost every place. In every place in Zeitoun, Hamas prepared for defense and attacks against our forces.”
“It decided to turn everything into a military array,” Gimel continued. “So we are destroying everything we need to in order to destroy Hamas.”
He was not at all reticent about discussing what Israel is doing in Zeitoun.
His battalion, he said, “is destroying what is left of the Zeitoun Battalion, above ground, underground.”
“They won’t have infrastructure, houses that dominate the roads, or tunnels from which they can emerge to attack our forces or border communities — that’s the reason we’re returning” to Zeitoun, he said. “When we leave for what I hope is the final time, the next terrorists that arrive won’t have anywhere to come back to. They’ll come back to open ground, from which they can’t threaten our forces.”
Soldiers from the 7th Brigade, operating under the 99th Division, discovered and destroyed a roughly one-kilometer-long Hamas tunnel in Zeitoun equipped with living quarters and weapons this week.
Israel has also been accused by international critics of failing to protect Gazan civilians, even intentionally targeting them as part of an alleged genocide campaign.
Officers were unequivocal in their insistence that they are doing everything they can to get civilians away from the fighting.
“There are the preliminary activities that we do in order to evacuate the population to interior areas so they won’t be on the battlefield,” said Cpt. “Lamed,” a company commander in the Givati Brigade’s Rotem Battalion, operating as part of the 7th Armored Brigade. “We are unequivocally operating in a way that is moral, ethical and appropriate.”
IDF forces designate areas as “green” or “red” based on the presence of civilians. In red areas, rules of engagement are highly restricted.
The 7th Armored Brigade’s dismantling of Zeitoun, and of the Shejaiya neighborhood over the three months prior, are important in and of themselves, said the officers. Yet the announced impending takeover of Gaza City looms over discussions of the brigade’s operations.
IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir — who reportedly opposed the operation — said last week that the military is pushing ahead with its plans to capture Gaza City during a visit to Khan Younis.
“We are advancing with the efforts for action in Gaza City. We already have forces operating on the outskirts of the city, and additional forces will join them later,” Zamir said to troops of the Kfir Infantry Brigade and 188th Armored Brigade, who repelled a Hamas attack on their encampment the day before.
“We are in the stages of an extended preparation ahead of the next operation,” said Shin. “This mission has the same orientation. I can’t tell you exactly every arrow on a map that the chief of staff will approve, but our operations here are certainly part of this effort.”
Though their military operations are focused on defeating the Hamas threat in front of them, the soldiers of the 7th Armored Brigade said the 50 hostages still held by Hamas are never far from their minds.
Of all IDF formations, the 7th Brigade has the most personal connection with the plight of the hostages. Six of its crewmen are still being held in Gaza.
“All of our efforts are in order to bring them home to their families,” said Shin. “There is not a day and there is not a night that goes by, there is not a situation assessment, there is not an operational order in which this issue is not our compass.”
At the same time, their actions might be endangering the very comrades they wish to rescue. Zamir reportedly said, “There is great danger to the lives of the hostages in taking over Gaza City.” Hostage families have echoed that fear.
“We are taking all the necessary actions in order to ensure that they won’t be hurt,” promised Shin.
“The issue of hostages is at the top of our priorities in all of our actions – in the tactical action, and in the ultimate goal for which we are operating.”