Border operation revealed errors within IOF command, Israeli media say

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Israeli Media
14 Jun 2023 13:43

Israeli media says the operation carried out by Egyptian soldier Mohammad Salah at the Egyptian-Palestinian borders revealed dangerous errors when it comes to the Israeli occupation forces.

Israeli media reported that an Israeli occupation soldier was killed and two others were wounded in a shooting attack that targeted the Shuafat military checkpoint

The operation carried out by Egyptian martyr Mohammad Salah at the Egyptian borders with occupied Palestine made a series of dangerous revelations at the level of the IOF command, Israeli media said Wednesday.

"The investigation that was carried out was one of the most strenuous over the past few years," the Israeli Israel Hayom newspaper reported, adding that the errors and the mistakes unveiled by the probe would not be repeated anywhere else.

"The incident itself, as it was known since the first second, is purely tactical," the newspaper said. "The dangerous parts are related to the reporting and compliance procedures."

Check out: Who is Mohammad Salah Ibrahim; the Egyptian conscript?

"The Israeli army dealt with them, for some reason, as mistakes and defects, but some of them touched the limits of gross negligence," adding that "the first [mistake] of which was a violation of a clear directive from the division's commander, with a team of four soldiers at the posts, not two. This behavior continued for at least two months, without anyone in the division or brigade knowing about it and correcting it."

The second error, Israel Hayom added, was the fact that the shift is 12 hours. "It is true that it is in order to save manpower and allow soldiers to have longer hours of rest, but the immediate result is a decrease in alertness and operation tension."

"The third, contrary to clear orders, was not checked for communication with Israeli soldiers every hour, and thus it was found that two of them were killed after two hours," the newspaper said.

"When this check was conducted at dawn, it was not by signal, as required, but via cell phone, which was found at the sites, contrary to orders," the website added.

The fourth error, according to the Israeli outlet, is that when two soldiers heard gunfire nearby and noticed someone crossing the Philadelphi Route, they did not inform anyone. "During the investigation, they claimed that they believed another soldier was passing by."

The fifth, meanwhile, is that during the confrontation with the officer in which Staff Sargeant Ohad Danan was killed, some soldiers did not have their helmets on, including Dahan. In the IOF, they explained this by saying the soldiers had no knowledge that they were on a battlefield, "but this is a flawed explanation."

"It is most probable that the operational compliance in the battalion and the brigade was dysfunctional, and contributed to the harsh result," Israeli Hayom added.

"These results necessitated the harsh steps that required the dismissal of the brigade commander and reprimanding the division commander," the outlet said. "It is surprising that the commander of the Bardelas Battalion, who had numerous failures take place during his tenure, was not fired, but only reprimanded" and deprived of any promotion for six years.

With that, "the Israeli army did well when they focused on the higher command. This indicates that the responsibility is not only at the bottom, and this long series of failures and mistakes have a price."

What happened at the Ajwa Crossing?

At approximately 9 pm, local time, on June 3, a male soldier and a female soldier took up their positions in an observation tower situated 3 kilometers northwest of the Awja Crossing, also known as "Nitzana."

Later at dawn on Saturday, at around 6 am, gunfire erupted in the vicinity of the observation post, which led the male and female soldiers to inform their command of what they heard and they decided to conduct a search operation around the tower. Contact with the soldiers was lost, and it remained severed until a military force was dispatched to their location.

By approximately 9 am, the responding force discovered that both soldiers had been killed and their weapons found beside them. In response, an extensive search operation was initiated, and additional military reinforcements, including airborne units and fighter helicopters, were deployed.

Around noon, the spokesperson for the IOF made an announcement stating that a renewed exchange of gunfire had taken place in the area. Approximately thirty minutes later, it was reported that an armed individual, identified as an Egyptian citizen wearing Egyptian police attire, had been killed. Following this, the IOF confirmed the death of a third Israeli soldier and the injury of an officer.

The Israeli occupation named the three soldiers killed as Staff Sargeant Ohad Danan, who was killed later on, and Staff Sargeant Ori Izhad Iluz and Sargeant Lia Ben nun, who were killed in their guard post.

The Israeli Walla! news website reported Friday that Israeli occupation soldiers from the so-called Bardelas Battalion have refused to attend their 12-hour shift at the border with Egypt, following the Egyptian conscript Mohammad Salah Ibrahim's Al-Awja crossing operation that left three occupation soldiers killed last week.

According to the Israeli website, the occupation troops told their superiors that they were unwilling to endure such long shifts and chastised their battalion's leadership for forcing them to work these hours despite the bad weather, reporting that they felt worthless after being out in the field for so long.

In addition, Israeli media cited an Israeli occupation military spokesperson as saying that "following an assessment of the situation and the incident at the Egyptian border, it was decided to convert the single guard position to a two-person job during night hours."