Several loud booms pierced the air and thundered in my ears despite the earplugs I was given to reduce the sensory impact.
But these were no Hamas rocket booms – the most common noise Israelis have been hearing since the October 7 Israel-Gaza war started.
Rather, The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday was embedded with a naval unit while it fired numerous shells against Hamas forces in Gaza City while they were trying to ambush IDF Unit 400.
The IDF is regularly moving its forces through deep parts of northern Gaza urban areas, even reaching the coast, but these forces regularly encounter ambushes.
To thwart the ambushes, ground troops are regularly accompanied by aircraft, drones, tanks, artillery, and, in some cases, even naval vessels.
Going with the IDF Navy along the Gaza coast
Leaving from a base near Ashdod, the Post sailed on a Dvora-class fast patrol boat alongside a missile boat.
Within less than 10 minutes of Unit 400 forces radioing that they were under attack, the information was passed through various military pipelines to the naval forces, and a precise naval attack was carried out.
In some cases, the navy has successfully attacked Hamas forces within 30 seconds of ground troops encountering resistance or attacks.
Later during the naval patrol, naval forces used ship-to-ship gunfire to neutralize a potential threat from a floating explosive device.
There were at least four rounds of gunfire at the device, with Col. Eitan Paz ordering his weapons officers to continue additional rounds of fire as he observed to decide if the threat had been neutralized.
The navy has attacked hundreds of targets, including more than 200 Hamas terrorists.
Naval officers pointed out that our vessel was traversing the exact spot where seven Hamas naval commando vessels had invaded Israel via Zikim Beach on October 7.
Paz said his forces were engaged in fighting the seven Hamas ships from almost the start of the invasion, even before 7 a.m. This is in contrast to many IDF land forces, which only arrived hours later. Part of the reason for their early involvement was that their ships were already at sea for two days at the time.
Other naval combat fighters said that on October 7 they had continued fighting Hamas forces for almost 11 hours straight.
Out of the seven ships, Paz’s forces immediately destroyed three, but four initially got through to the Zikim Beach.
Around 11 Hamas naval commandos landed at Zikim Beach with three of them being killed by IDF naval forces near the landing.
Regarding the additional eight Hamas naval commandos, four were killed when they arrived at the nearby Zikim kibbutz.
The kibbutz’s local security team had been warned in advance by the navy and, therefore, were ready for the commandos and able to push them back.
Two more Hamas naval commandos were killed later that day by regular IDF forces, who encountered them in a car.
Further, the last two were killed by Maglan special forces around five or six days later.
The IDF suffered one dead and two wounded from the Hamas naval commandos’ invasion.
IDF sources acknowledged that they had underestimated how much Hamas had built up its naval forces despite the IDF having significantly harmed those forces during the May 2021 Gaza conflict.
After confronting that invasion, the IDF naval forces in the Ashdod area started “to hunt” any exposed Hamas forces it saw in the sea or maneuvering on land.
Over 20 hours, those IDF naval forces killed around 28 additional Hamas terrorists.
Since then, there have been at least three other serious attempts at amphibious assaults, all of which were fully thwarted by the IDF’s naval forces.
For example, on October 25, Hamas naval commandos used a complex trajectory and series of maneuvers to try to outwit Israel’s naval defenses.
IDF naval forces pursued them with determination until they were killed, and IDF ships also destroyed the mosque on the coast that the Hamas forces were using as cover for sneaking out to sea.
Besides patrol forces, there are regular IDF forces guarding the country’s natural gas rigs, and some naval forces control their own drones that can perform both surveillance and attack activities.
In addition, the IDF used underground robots to search for bodies and weaponry left behind by Hamas when its forces were attacked and underground methods of attack to pound Gaza maritime forces.
Naval forces strike a balance between approaching close to the coast to improve the probability of striking Hamas targets, versus mostly remaining out of range of Hamas’s anti-tank missiles.
The terror group has tried to fire numerous times on IDF naval vessels but has not reached them to date.
Paz said, “The navy has acted in full cooperation with the maneuvering ground forces since the invasion of the Gaza Strip. Each separate division is accompanied by a parallel naval force, including fast patrol boats, missile boats, and Shayetet 13 naval commandos, assisting with firepower and surveillance.”
The Post and the naval forces may have been beyond Hamas’s anti-tank missile range but were not entirely safe.
Just before the ships were about to sail, a rocket warning siren blared and everyone in the area ran for cover in the base’s safe rooms.
If at home, this writer is used to five or 10 persons in a small safe room, the IDF experience included dozens with almost no room to move.