By now it’s clear that the war that has been raging in the area will not be coming to an end any time soon, and after countless mortars and rocket attacks, after Hamas tunnels and murder squads that have been sent to Israeli villages, it still seems that the death toll isn’t high enough to persuade attackers to cease and desist.
In light of all that has happened, the IDF is interested in one thing and one thing only: to defend Israel and if we weren’t convinced that Operation Protective Edge had become a war against Hamas, the Gaza border region quickly proves the theory. In regions south of Ashkelon and Sderot there is barely any civilian life present. Instead, the Israel Defense Force has taken over the area with military checkpoints and army traffic. Military helicopters swoop around constantly, landing and picking up injured soldiers. Here and there, IDF artillery thuds may reverberate and code red rockets alerts sound all the time.
The desolate picture of villages that once thrived is enough to turn the most optimist of men into a depressive wreck. Israeli families live in constant terror that Hamas gunmen could emerge from tunnels at any time and some of these families have decided to evacuate the area to get away from harm’s way. Only those trying to avoid financial ruin have remained to farm their lands but they also fear the worst.
While all this is happening in Israel, IDF forces are trying to locate and destroy as many Hamas tunnels as possible inside Gaza. They are trying to lift the paralysis that has set over Israel not just by the projectile fire that has become a part of day to day life for Israeli citizens, but also by the constant fear that Hamas might appear and murder any Israeli they come across.
IDF continued to raid Gazan districts in order to get to the tunnel shafts that begin inside civilian homes within the Gaza Strip. Infantry soldiers that have been sent in Shejaia were also backed by Armored Corps who had mapped out the location of enemy forces that had been hiding in civilian homes.
What followed afterwards is something that no exercise of imagination could describe. The Artillery Corps launched shelling over areas where they had previously instructed Gazan civilians to evacuate. Sources explained that, had they not acted in such a manner, the IDF would have gotten 600 body bags back instead of ten buildings that are now lying in ruin.
