Yanis Darras 17:14 p.m., January 16, 2024

More than 100 days after the start of Israel's counteroffensive in the Gaza Strip, Israel's fight against Hamas continues. Back from the front, Noam Ohana, a reservist in an elite unit of IDF parachute commandos, tells Europe 1 about the war in the streets of the Palestinian enclave.

Nearly three months after the horror of 7 October, Israel continues its offensive in the Gaza Strip. The goal is to eliminate Hamas, which carried out the terror attack that killed more than 1,100 Israelis, most of them civilians. Speaking to Europe 1 on Tuesday morning, Noam Ohana, a reservist in an elite unit of paratrooper commandos within the IDF, stressed the difficulty of intervening in the Gaza Strip.

In this enclave where nearly two million people live, there are two parallel worlds, explains the man, an account manager in civilian life. "The complexity can be summed up as follows: there is civilian infrastructure, a city with people who get up in the morning and go to work. And then underneath, there's another city and another life. There is military infrastructure that has been built that is truly mind-blowing," Ohana said.

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"The two coexist"

"I've walked into these tunnels and to see the level of engineering that there is and all the resources that have been used to build this infrastructure of death, it's quite disturbing," he continues. "We think that something else could have been done with the aid" that was used to build the tunnels, he said.

"As a result, you have a school that can be both a military target because it has all the elements of a military target with a weapons depot and a rocket battery. And at the same time, it remains a school with its images of books and school bags. And the two live together," the soldier adds.

A heavy toll on Israeli and Palestinian society

Noam Ohana, a resident of Tel Aviv, volunteered to intervene in Gaza on 9 October. Among the IDF's missions is to try to free hostages still held by Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip. But the war weighs heavily: "I had a reservist in my unit who was killed in action while going to fetch, on the basis of information, the bodies of hostages. He was the son of former Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot. So it gives you an idea of the price that Israeli society is paying, including for the establishment."