Tomer Tzaban is a former undercover officer. He fought in the Shimshon unit at the beginning of the Second Intifada. He is the author of the new book "In the Heart of Gaza" and the bestseller "Undercover in Gaza" (Kinneret Zmora-Bitan). Today, he is a diamantaire.
Q: Tell us about your first mission as an undercover soldier with the Shimshon unit in Gaza in the 1990s.
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"My team's first mission was in the Jabaliya refugee camp. Israeli trucks were hit every evening by gunfire, mines, and roadside bombs, and the terrorist cell would slip away into the refugee camp, which was just a few minutes away from the road that supplied the [Jewish] community of Dugit and an adjacent naval post. Our goal was to lure them out of their hiding spots. We were dressed in black suits and veils tailored specially for us, and we tried to cause an uprising in the refugee camp."
Q: How do you get a refugee camp to revolt?
"We staged a breakdown by an IDF supply truck outside the entrance to the camp, and our team was supposed to lead the crowd to the military vehicle and attack the soldiers; we assumed that this would lead the wanted men to leave their hiding places and expose themselves. The team moved around the center of the camp, and the crowd gathered around us shouting 'Allahu Akbar' as we approached the broken-down vehicle. The entire camp followed us, thousands of refugees. Suddenly, we noticed a masked man approaching us, and from him, we realized that our wanted men had made an appointment in the evening at one of Jabaliya's schools.
"We arrived at the same school in the evening and saw nine masked men entering the school courtyard armed with axes and machetes. One of them also had a loaded Kalashnikov. He started talking with our collaborator and suddenly someone pushed him to the ground and the head of the terrorist cell put the barrel of the rifle into the man's mouth. All this happened as masked men surrounded us."
Q: That's a rough situation for a first mission
"I felt like I was in a movie, and soon the director would yell "Cut.' But of course, that wasn't what happened. The leader of the terrorist cell shouted at us, 'Jabalya is mine." In our earpieces, we heard the command, 'Prepare to engage.' A few moments later, the command to open fire roared over the radio. We were ten soldiers against nine terrorists, we drew our weapons, and each soldier shot almost simultaneously at the masked man in front of him. There was the sound of a massive explosion in the schoolyard, and almost like magic, all the masked men fell to the ground. It was the first time the soldiers on my team had killed a terrorist."
Q: You eliminated several wanted terrorists in Gaza and during your service, you encountered major terrorist figures, including Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a senior Hamas figure who smuggled weapons from Iran to Gaza. Some 20 years before he was assassinated in Dubai, you almost killed him yourself, in an event you wrote about in your new book "In the Heart of Gaza."
"In early June 1990, I was scrambled to the unit's briefing room. The Shin Bet Rafah district officer pasted pictures of Muhammad Nazimi Nasser and Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, members of the cell that murdered IDF soldiers Avi Sasportas and Ilan Saadon, They were a well-trained cell that kept constantly on the move.
"The cell's hideout was in Khirbet al Adas, east of Rafah. The cell members hiding there, Nasser and al-Mabhouh, were armed with rifles and handguns. At midnight on a moonless night, we began to move through an olive grove toward a dilapidated two-story building. One force stole toward the door, and my force went in through a window on the second floor. As soon as I reached the window, I saw a young man in front of me with a frozen, frightened look. He was dressed in a white tank top and underwear. I told him to freeze, but he started running away. I caught up with him in the basement and pointed a gun at his head.
"Suddenly, there was a huge explosion at the entrance to the house. It was the iron door being breached and the rest of the force entered. A search of the house revealed that the terrorist cell had escaped. What we didn't know at the time was that these terrorists were on their way to cross the perimeter fence separating Israeli and Egyptian Rafah, and they had with them some of Ilan Saadon's personal belongings."
Q: You were the first into the house; if things had worked out differently perhaps you would have been able to take down Mabhouh.
"Maybe, but that wasn't how it worked out. Either way, 20 years later, when the pictures of Mabhouh's assassins were published, I smiled to myself. That day I went to Ilan Saadon's grave and asked him to forgive us for taking so long."
Q: Did you ever encounter tunnels during your time in Gaza?
"I knew Gaza like the back of my hand, but things have changed since then, of course. The Gaza underground was only in its infancy when I served there. At the time, the tunnels were mainly in the Rafah area, and their function was to smuggle drugs, people, goods, and weapons. The tunnels back then were shafts like those we see in the Shfela from the time of Judah Maccabee. The more we tightened the border, the bigger the tunnels became, but they were nothing like what we see today."
Five days in a ceiling void
Q: From your fieldwork did you manage to understand how Gazans differ from us?
Let me tell you a true story: one of my missions was to eliminate a high-level wanted man in Rafah. The Shin Bet couldn't get to him, and every evening collaborators would be murdered. The Shin Bet recruited a collaborator, an arms dealer, who came to Rafah with weapons and sought to sell them to the target. I was sent as a sniper to observe what was happening: I located a two-by-four-meter ceiling void and waited there for five days. During that time, I observed the people of the city and looked at them deeply.
On the fourth day, I noticed six masked men advancing to the building I was in. I was sure they were on to me. I put down my sniper rifle and came out of hiding with a submachine gun and a handgun. Suddenly, I saw the terrorists interrogating a collaborator, and in the end stabbing and killing him. What changed my understanding of them was what happened next: they mutilated him' and they cut off his legs, hands, and genitals. They took a sadistic pleasure that I couldn't understand. This was the first time I realized that they were not like us in any way. I realized that we had failed to understand something very fundamental about them, so what we saw and heard on October 7, unfortunately, didn't surprise me."
Q: Things had been boiling under the surface for years, and on October 7 we saw everything erupt.
"Israelis refused to see the truth. We had a mirror held up in front of us and we refused to look at it. Lately, the penny has dropped for me: People asked me, 'Is there no hope after all?' What we can see from this question is that many people are willing to ignore the truth; they fall for the illusion that there is a future for us with these people. We insist on finding something, which in my experience doesn't exist… There is a people here that wants to take our place. We have to understand that."
Q: You say that with a lot of confidence. Perhaps there is no absolute truth here?
"In the closing chapter of the book I write about an encounter I had about ten years ago in Antwerp, with a Jordanian who told me: Today you are strong, you have an American father. But once you are weakened, we will slaughter you all. The same is true for some Israeli Arabs, unfortunately. If Hezbollah had occupied territory inside Israel, I believe that some of them would have joined in. This is true of Jenin; it is true of Gaza. That's how I see things."
Q: What particularly worries you right now?
"I believe that the tunnels were built over the years to create a fortress, waiting for the day when we would move in. The IDF works smart, but it's hard work. As long as we are on the move, we are in good shape. If we are stationary that is when we will have problems; that's why undercover units were established and this is why the Shimshon unit needs to be re-established – knows how to go inside, do what needs to be done, and leave secretly."
Q: Was Shimshon substantially different from Duvdevan?
"No, but our specialization in Gaza was unique; Duvdevan operated in Judea and Samaria. In Judea and Samaria, you dress up as a school principal, a businessman. In Gaza, you disguise yourself as a worker. In Judea and Samaria, the population is more intelligent; Gaza is the pits. As time passes, people with money leave Gaza and what's left is the worst of the worst. In Judea and Samaria, people use perfume; in Gaza, we didn't shower for days so that we would be filthy. Imagine washing your hair with scented shampoo and then going out on an undercover mission. You would become a target straight away.
"The closure of the Shimshon unit was another measure that reduced our human intelligence in Gaza. It is impossible to compare the number of collaborators before and after we left Gaza. In Judea and Samaria, the Palestinians say that whoever dreams of carrying out an attack at night, gets up in the morning and the Shin Bet arrests him. This is not the case now in Gaza. We saw evidence of this with the failure of the Sayeret Matkal operation there two years ago. It's like entering an enemy country like Syria or Lebanon."
Q: Do you remember your last time in Gaza?
"When I left Gaza, only a few cells had weapons, very different from the situation today. Even if our cover was burned, we didn't find ourselves facing terrorists with submachine guns and RPGs from every corner. In most cases, it was fauda [Arabic for chaos, and a word used by Israeli undercover teams when their mission has been compromised] with knives, sometimes handguns, and rifles. My last memory of Gaza is a thought: I'm leaving the place, and I really don't know what the future will bring to the place. I understand that this is a place we have no interest in controlling, and on the other hand, every area we withdraw from will lead to a nest of terror. Gaza will not change. They don't want to build, develop, prosper. I find it hard to understand that mindset."
Q: From your deep knowledge of Gaza, what do you think will happen there in the short term, even before "the day after"?
"If people are hungry, more and more terrorists will turn to the Shin Bet and Unit 504 [a secretive IDF intelligence unit that operates agents and interrogates prisoners] and provide information in exchange for aid. It's already happening. Gaza will descend into chaos. For us, this may be an advantage, because it will allow us to gather better intelligence."
Q: What should "the day after" look like?
"For years, wealthy people left Gaza. They paid to leave. We need to encourage them to leave."
Q: Assuming that there will be countries willing to take them in.
"The problem is – and other countries understand this – is that they have no ambition to be a prosperous people. In 1970, in Black September, they tried to assassinate the King of Jordan; they turned Jordan into a terrorist state and were expelled after a year of fighting. Lebanon, a prosperous country, deteriorated into a civil war after they [the Palestinians] built up Fatahland. In Kuwait, the Emir expelled them to Judea and Samaria. And since their only aspiration is to eliminate us, in Gaza they will always return to their ways."
Q: Things are heating up in the north What lessons can we draw from Gaza when it comes to Lebanon?
"The most important thing is the images coming out of Gaza. The Middle East understands the language of power and the destruction in Gaza resonates in the Arab world. Even those countries that want to make peace with us – the Saudis, the Emiratis – want to know that they are forming a defense alliance with a strong country. So, what happens in Gaza is clearly heard and seen in Lebanon. [Hezbollah Secretary General, Hassan] Nasrallah, unlike [Hamas Gaza leader, Yahya] Sinwar, loves Lebanon, and the Second Lebanon War left a scar on him. He doesn't want Lebanon to be left in ruins, and that gives us leverage over him."
Q: Don't neglect the soldiers
At the close of your first book, "In the Heart of Gaza," you talk about life after military service. Is your service still with you today?
"I compartmentalized everything for a year and one pays a price for that. For example, on a vacation of all places, when you're near a beautiful lake with your family and everything looks good and you have some release for your soul, the trauma too is released bit by bit. In one of his interviews, Lior Raz from Fauda said that he forgot a lot of things, and only while speaking and writing did the memories come back to him. That was the case for me too."
I repressed significant and difficult events from my service but watching Fauda changed something for me. I looked at the tense and frightened faces of my children as we watched the show and realized that I had been through exceptional and unusual experiences. In some ways, watching Fauda led me to write the first book, which was really a form of release. Up until then, the weight from my time in Gaza weighed heavily on my shoulders. Beyond that, of course, there are things I'd love to let go of. Some things that are suitable for the army but you don't want them to be part of your civilian life. "
Q: Does that also apply to reservists coming out of Gaza today?
"The situation of the soldiers is insane; they can be fighting in Gaza, be given a short break and within half an hour they can be home. Something about this scenario just doesn't work out. These are powerful experiences, and people's realities can get mixed up. These transitions confuse the mind, and people can find themselves loading their weapon in normal situations because they are still in a state of operational alertness. This is something that is also typical of undercover soldiers: one day you are a resident of Gaza, and another day you are an ordinary citizen."
"I remember going out one time during my military service and stopping to fill up on gas. I saw an Arab gas station attendant holding a fueling nozzle, and within a second I was in another place, seeing a terrorist, a refugee camp, thinking someone was coming to kill us. That's when I realized something was wrong with me. I dealt with the trauma by myself for years, so I say to soldiers that they should talk about things, and let things go. For the families, my message is to pay attention to outbursts of violence, nightmares, and alienation. Without care and attention, this violence seeps into society. It is important to give people the feeling that they are not alone, and more importantly, to deal with the whole trauma issue at the state level."
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