Alwaght- Before Gaza war, Golani Brigade was a big name for Israelis. This name represented the army’s most elite fighters, and one of the highly regarded commando brigades that Tel Aviv boasted about was the Golani Brigade. Israeli officials claim that each member of the Golani Brigade is equivalent to 13 ordinary soldiers.
There is a highly foggy image of Golani Brigade not only abroad but also inside the Israeli regime. It is said that the brigade does not have such problems as indiscipline or punishment of its members. Those who join it start their training with shooting and accurate targeting and end with learning various torture, violence, and abuse tactics.
Every time the Israeli army faces a difficult and sensitive military mission that requires persistence and ruthlessness, they resort to the Golani Brigade. The ex-commanders of the brigade compare it to a Rottweiler dog that should be chained in normal days, but will be the best option by your side when hunting.
However, the image of invincibility of the Golani Brigade is badly damaged in Gaza war, with an ex-commander admitting to Israeli Channel 12 that a quarter of the total number of the elite force’s forces were killed in Gaza battles. Earlier, an Israeli general had confirmed that just in the first day of Gaza war, the much-vaunted brigade lost 72 of its fighters.
Shejaiya, the graveyard of the Golanis
Shejaiya was one of the largest and most populous neighborhoods in Gaza City with a population of 110,000 before the war, though its population has now changed due to killing of a large number of its residents and the displacement of others. Its area is 6 square kilometers. Israeli army forces, especially the Golani Brigade, suffered heavy losses in this neighborhood.
Most Golani Brigade casualties were in Shejaiya. This neighborhood is located in the east of Gaza and near the border of the occupied territories. The Israeli kibbutz of Nahal Oz is less than a kilometer away from Shejaiya.
Historical sources link name of Shejaiya to the Shujauddin Uthman al-Kurdi, the prominent fighter who died in 1239 in the Ayyubid war against the Crusaders. The southern part of Shejaiya is called ‘Turkman’ in honour of the Turkman tribes that joined Saladin during his campaign to liberate Palestine from the Crusader army and its allies in the 1100s.
Due to their proximity to the eastern border of the Gaza Strip, the residents of Shejaiya have been targeted by the Israelis many times, even before the current war. Therefore, they have always shown great readiness to fight against the Israelis.
Israeli journalist Hanan Greenwood who entered Gaza with Golani Brigade described the neighborhood as one of the most steadfast targets the brigade faced since the beginning of war. Shejaiya is densely populated, says the journalist, and is considered as one of Gaza’s strongest neighborhoods. That is why Golani casualties in it were high.
Why have military casualties been high?
The Israeli military has so far confirmed that 463 of its forces were killed since the start of war on October 7. 127 were killed since the start of the ground offensive about three wees after Hamas’s Operation Al-Aqsa Storm, and so far hundreds troops were injured. A large part of these casualties are from Golani forces. Indeed, these are Israel’s own official figures and the real numbers are way higher.
Various opinions have been expressed about the reason for the high casualties of the Israeli army. Here are some of them:
Gaza hybrid war: The battle of Gaza is not a classic one, rather, the Israeli army is facing a guerrilla army that is easily able to tire out the Israeli army.
Hamas readiness: An Israeli army commander told CNN that Hamas had spent a lot of time preparing for war, building an extensive tunnel system, and setting traps and defenses. This is probably one of the reasons why the 2023 war in Gaza has been more deadly for the Israeli army than its 2014 ground operation. The Israeli army lost only 67 of its soldiers in the 51-day war of 2014, but now the actual number of casualties may be around a 1,000 people, although the official statistics of the army’s casualties are less than 500 people on the 73rd day of the war. This comes as, unlike the Hamas forces, the Israeli army has been involved in internal disputes over Netanyahu’s judicial reform program for the past year, and before the war, even some reserve and active-duty air force pilots had threatened to resign.
Difficult urban warfare: The Israeli army is not fundamentally built for urban battles, rather, it has always prepared itself for cross-border classic wars. However, Operation Al-Aqsa Storm caught the Israeli forces off guard and involved them in a tough urban warfare.
