The IDF on Sunday published its probe into Hamas’s conquest and destruction of the Erez Crossing on October 7, 2023, which ended the ability of 18,000 Gazans per day to work in Israel and also killed nine soldiers and took three hostages.
Part of what stands out about the destruction is that, unlike Hamas attacking some other IDF positions, the destruction of the Erez Crossing did not really remove any strategic Israeli assets. Rather, it mainly harmed the Gazan population itself by ending a relatively lucrative employment situation for a substantial number of Gazans.
Another point that stands out is that IDF reinforcements came even later to assist – not until between 3:30 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. – than they did to many civilian villages where small reinforcements started to arrive around 8:30 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. and larger reinforcements arrived between 12:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m.
While some IDF forces at the Erez Crossing fought to hold off the Hamas attackers, many found command centers and other locked defensive rooms that Hamas did not manage to breach, and they remained in those safe locations for many hours until the early evening.
For example, at 6:52 a.m., soldiers manning the main control center noted that their area would likely soon be overwhelmed with invaders and managed to move to a more isolated and defensible location on the second floor of the building at the crossing.
The soldiers at Erez also had essentially no effective help from tanks, artillery, or air power.
There were a few instances around 7:20 a.m. and 8:20 a.m. where air force drones tried to fire on some Hamas forces to get them to retreat or fired on a Hamas tractor.
But during at least one key point when a drone could have helped by eliminating a group of Hamas forces gathered together in their pickup truck vehicles, the drone pilot could not imagine that such a large collection of vehicles could be invaders.
He assumed that the trucks must be Israeli and left them alone, while being very conservative about even firing on the obvious Hamas forces as he was very fearful he would get in significant trouble for accidentally wounding IDF soldiers in the near vicinity of the invaders.
Lack of support and slow defenses
As in many locations on October 7, the IDF soldiers on the ground and the air force assets nearby did not communicate and so were unable to work together cooperatively to defend the area or themselves.
The invasion of the area started around 6:40 a.m. after the massive volley of rockets by Hamas at 6:29 a.m. sent most of the few dozen soldiers at the Erez Crossing into safe rooms.
There were only five guards at the border for Erez when Hamas started to invade with a few dozen fighters who had come from central Jabalia in northern Gaza.
Hamas tried to invade from around four separate vectors, with them succeeding in three out of four spots.
At the fourth spot, their attempts to explode a hole in a defensive wall failed and only damaged it.
Most of the fighting between the IDF soldiers and Hamas invaders took place between 7:00 a.m. and 8:30 a.m.
A lucky point, according to the probe, was that a group of paratroopers, who could have been out on patrol, happened to be on base and were able to assist with the defense efforts. There were also Golani forces in the base.
At later points, there were two larger waves of invaders, adding up to around 100, who also attacked the Erez village nearby, but there was less direct fighting with them at the crossing.
Many of these invaders, from Islamic Jihad or not affiliated with a specific terror group, spent much of their time breaking apart physical aspects of the Erez Crossing and indoor terminal.
Nine terrorist bodies were found in the terminal and one on the rooftop of the terminal after the battle.
Several terrorists had taken up sniper positions on top of the Erez Crossing rooftop and were trying to pick off soldiers.
They also succeeded at forcing the retreat of the deputy company commander who had tried to come to the base by vehicle to help with the defense at the orders of the battalion commander.
However, given the heavy fire he took and his lack of clarity from where it was coming, he retreated.
Later, a platoon commander managed to get a clean shot and killed one of the Hamas rooftop snipers.
The IDF probe criticized the mechanisms for locking and unlocking some of the command centers and safe rooms as too slow moving, given that one soldier was killed while waiting for an extended period to be let into such a room, and another was wounded.
Unlike many other battles, there were no Israeli civilians involved in this battle.
IDF Col. Gidi Kfir-El, who led the probe of Erez Crossing, said that most of the investigation had been ready for presentation already in summer 2024, when all of the probes were originally scheduled to come out.
Ultimately, then IDF chief Herzi Halevi decided to hold the probes of the individual battles until the larger probes of the high command and IDF intelligence were ready, such that any failings in smaller battles would be viewed through the lens of the larger failings of the top echelons of the military.
