Israel Chief of Staff: soldiers learning new combat lessons in Gaza

Israeli Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi said yesterday his forces have suffered heavy losses in the fight against Palestinian resistance fighters in the besieged Gaza Strip, where they have seen new battles and been forced to learn new combat lessons.

Halevi said during a meeting with a number of soldiers fighting in the Gaza Strip: “We are fighting in a complex area, above ground and underground, with an enemy [Palestinian resistance fighters] that has prepared a long time to defend in an organised manner.”

“There are residents, and a lot of houses, which makes the area very complicated to fight in,” he added.

Referring to the explosion in the Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip where six Israeli soldiers were killed and others were wounded on Monday, Halevi said, “It was a very complicated operation.”

“We are fighting in a very complicated space […] we are doing things we have never done before. As soon as something bad happened, and something very bad happened to us here, we lost quite a few people and had people injured. The only thing left for us as commanders – is to learn from what happened,” he added.

Hinting at the possibility of fighting in Lebanon, Halevi said: “After what you did, there is not a village in Lebanon that you cannot enter and destroy. We will put you in the right places, you will do the right thing there, a long war on the other side, and we will come out with good results.”

On Tuesday evening, a preliminary investigation by the Israeli army revealed that a shell fired by an Israeli tank led to the explosion that killed the soldiers in the Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.

READ: Israel army demolishes thousands of Palestinian homes in Gaza: Report