Surveillance soldiers on the Gaza border were reportedly sounding the alarm on Thursday about armed terrorist activity inside the Gaza Strip, in what they said feels like a repeat of their unheeded warnings before the October 7, 2023, onslaught.

Leading up to that Hamas-led invasion and massacre, the surveillance soldiers sent alerts about terrorists training for the attack, and were infamously ignored. Some of the surveillance soldiers, who are women, said sexism was a factor in their warnings being brushed aside.

On Thursday, Channel 12 quoted a number of unnamed soldiers who described a feeling of deja vu. They reported watching armed terrorists operate and lay explosives along the Gaza Yellow Line that divides the territory between Israeli and Hamas control.

“We’re really seeing that they know we won’t fire on them. The Gazans aren’t idiots. In the end, they’re constantly testing us and seeing if we react or not. It’s just like before October 7,” one of the soldiers is quoted as having said.

Another soldier told the network she feels “helpless” in the face of the terrorist activity she sees over the border. A different soldier said she and her comrades “feel a little unnecessary. If I know that, in any case, they won’t do anything with my identification [of terror activity], what’s the point of sitting eight hours a day and monitoring the area super-super-closely?”

A surveillance soldier quoted by the network went on to complain that combat soldiers stationed in Gaza are being used as “human shields.”

“In the end, the soldiers are stationed a few hundred meters from these terrorists,” one of the surveillance soldiers said of the combat troops in Gaza. “We can’t just abandon them.”

Amid efforts to advance a US-backed plan to disarm Hamas in the Strip, Israel quietly halted airstrikes in Gaza for a week before resuming them on Wednesday.

The strikes then multiplied on Thursday, with Israel said to have killed a Hamas company commander in a strike on southern Gaza’s Khan Younis and a senior Hamas police officer in a Gaza City strike.

Kushner to visit Israel, lean on PM to advance Hamas disarmament deal

Against that backdrop, a source familiar with the matter told The Times of Israel on Thursday that US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and top aide Jared Kushner was slated to travel to Israel next week to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, aiming to lean on him to allow the advancement of the Board of Peace’s plan to disarm Hamas in Gaza.

Kushner will be joined by Board of Peace Gaza envoy Nikolay Mladenov, the source said, adding that the exact date of the visit has not yet been finalized.

Hamas accepted the Board of Peace’s disarmament plan two weeks ago, but its advancement has been........

© The Times of Israel