21 Israeli soldiers killed while trying to build Gaza buffer

TEL AVIV - The deadliest attack on Israeli soldiers in the war in the Gaza Strip has drawn attention to one element of Israel’s postwar plans for the enclave: a buffer zone along the border to protect Israeli communities from attacks.

Israel launched its campaign against Hamas after its fighters streamed out of Gaza in a surprise attack Oct. 7 to kill about 1,200 people in Israel and take about 240 hostage. Israeli leaders say their goal is to eradicate the group as a political and military force.

As part of the effort to build the buffer zone, Israeli reservists were rigging explosives to demolish two buildings inside the enclave’s perimeter on Monday when Hamas militants fired rocket-propelled grenades at the mission, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said. The first hit a building holding explosives, causing the collapse of two buildings and killing 21 soldiers. Another RPG round hit a tank, he added.

It was the single greatest loss of Israeli life in more than 100 days of war on Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza. Three more Israeli soldiers were killed in fierce fighting elsewhere.

The 21 deaths brought the number of Israeli soldiers killed since the ground operation began to 221. They include 21 Americans who were serving in the Israel Defense Forces, the U.S. State Department has said.

The Israeli campaign against Hamas, one of the most destructive wars this century, has killed more than 25,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The ministry does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.

The IDF has been destroying buildings in Gaza as part of the buffer zone effort, Hagari said in a televised statement.

The United States has opposed any permanent change to Gaza’s territory, but Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday appeared to accept a temporary buffer zone. He said Israelis who have been displaced by rocket attacks from Gaza and Lebanon must be able to return to their homes.

“It is totally appropriate, something that we support, that those people be able to return to their homes and that the necessary security arrangements be in place to give them the confidence to do that,” Blinken said at a news conference in Abuja, Nigeria.

But he said the reconfiguration could not be open-ended. “When it comes to the permanent status of Gaza going forward, we’ve been clear, we remain clear about not encroaching on its territory,” he said.

Israel planned in late November to construct a permanent buffer zone up to a mile wide inside Gaza. But the Biden administration told the Israeli government that every inch of Gaza must remain Palestinian territory after the war. If a permanent security zone was needed along the border, U.S. officials said, it should be on Israel’s territory.

Israel has informed the United States that the buffer being constructed inside Gaza is only a temporary security accommodation to eliminate Hamas firing positions close to the border, according to a U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss diplomatic communications.

Evidence and testimony of atrocities committed by Hamas-led fighters on Oct. 7 continue to emerge.

On Tuesday, Israeli women who were held as hostages in Gaza told the Knesset that female captives were sexually abused.

Aviva Siegel, who was held in Gaza for more than a month, told lawmakers that captors attempted to dress women in “inappropriate clothes” and transform them into “their dolls, to whom they could do whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted.” They also subjected male hostages to sexual abuse, she said.

Siegel was one of more than 100 Israelis released by Hamas during a week-long cease-fire in late November in exchange for more than 200 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons and the delivery of more aid to Gaza. More than 100 Israelis are believed to remain in Hamas captivity.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that the IDF was investigating the soldiers’ deaths.

“We must learn the necessary lessons and do everything to preserve the lives of our warriors,” he said in a statement. “In the name of our heroes, and for our own lives, we will not stop the fight until reaching absolute victory.”

“This is a war that will determine the future of Israel for decades to come,” Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Tuesday on social media. “The fall of our fighters is a requirement for achieving the goals of the war.”

Israel has withdrawn some forces from northern Gaza in recent weeks. Authorities say the next phase of the war will involve more closely targeted raids and assassinations than the broad air and ground campaign with which the IDF has razed much of the north.

But fighting continues, particularly in central and southern Gaza, around the city of Khan Younis and approaching Rafah, on the border between Gaza and Egypt, where more than 1 million Palestinians have taken shelter.

Israel announced Tuesday that its ground troops had encircled Khan Younis in the south and with the air force had killed dozens of Palestinian militants. The city, the IDF’s main current focus, is believed to be housing Hamas military leader Yehiya Sinwar. The fighting there is expected to last for weeks.

As strikes continued, the IDF late Monday directed some residents of Khan Younis, including those in the city center, to evacuate to the seaside village of Mawasi, which it designated a “safer” zone. But on Tuesday, at least seven people were killed in a strike on a makeshift tent community there, according to Marwan al-Hams, director of Rafah’s al-Najjar Hospital, which received the dead and the injured.

Asmaa Khudair, 39, told The Washington Post that a missile “fell on us like fire,” starting a blaze that burned her daughter, niece and husband alive as ambulances were unable to reach the area.

Khudair, who spoke by phone from the hospital, said she fled with a 6-year-old daughter “while our bodies were burning with fire” and broke the fingers in her right hand in the process. “The tent caught fire, and I saw my husband’s body burning,” she said. “Our hearts burned.”

The IDF did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Raed al-Nams, a spokesman for the Palestine Red Crescent Society in Gaza, texted that “the situation in Khan Younis is very hard until now. It is basically forbidden to enter or leave it.”

Israel has kept at least three brigades and additional special forces inside the enclave, the IDF said this month. But Hagari, the spokesman, said Tuesday that “more reservists will be required in all the combat arenas.”

He said the military strategy going forward would include “both freeing up reservists and focusing the activities.”

“We will be required to recruit reserve personnel again and act again in all the theaters of war, in the south and in the north,” he said. He added that Israel has another duty - to allow some of the hundreds of thousands who had enlisted after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack to return to their families, jobs and studies “to allow the state of Israel to fight for a long time.”