Combat medics rushed in to help when a military vehicle caught fire during the fighting in northern Gaza but their vehicle drove over a booby trap and the explosion killed these three soldiers, two of them combat medics.

I've volunteered many times in Israeli villages just across the border from the area of northern Gaza where this happened and while working in the area we often hear the sounds of war, praying each explosion is the sound of a controlled detonation by the army engineers dismantling Hamas tunnels and booby traps, and not God forbid soldiers being caught by one of these horrific IEDs.

Over and over again I've heard from local Israeli residents who've lived for years with the Hamas threat literally hanging over their community about the extent of the Hamas terror infrastructure still in place just across the border, the tunnels still being uncovered, some leading under the border into Israel, the extensive booby traps left by Hamas, munitions workshops and caches of rockets ready for launch.

I hear people in central Israel, just an hour or two away, questioning what the IDF is still doing there, failing to grasp the extent of the Hamas terror machine that still needs to be destroyed to protect the thousands upon thousands of Israelis who've lived for so long in its shadow.

The job of the IDF now has been made all the more dangerous and difficult because Hamas used the recent ceasefire to emerge from their hiding tunnels and booby trap buildings (including hospitals and schools) tunnel entrances and roads all over Gaza. Before IDF engineers can even begin taking apart Hamas infrastructure, for example destroying attack tunnels, they have to first check whether and how Hamas has rigged the site with bombs. The scale of the task is gargantuan.

People ask how over 600 days since October 7 Israeli forces are still dealing with this terrible problem and I in turn ask local Israeli residents I meet from kibbutzim and moshavim on the border, as well as soldiers serving in the area. The answer I receive is that we simply can't conceive of the scale of the Hamas war project, the extent to which they twisted everything in Gaza to be used for their campaign of terror, the number, size and depth of the tunnels crisscrossing Gaza below the surface, the single-minded purpose of Hamas rule in Gaza to turn the territory into a terror launchpad, embedding themselves into Gazan civilian infrastructure and routine.

It is terrifying and sickening to contemplate this, all the more so when I'm down in the Otef, pruning tomato vines or picking raspberries, wondering if perhaps under the very ground I'm standing on there is or was an attack tunnel, listening to the sounds of war, wondering exactly what I'm hearing, praying for the safety of all our dedicated soldiers devoting all they have to end the Hamas terror tyranny. Praying also that every Gazan civilian has evacuated from the area, that they've managed to evade Hamas attempts to force them to stay or forced them to act as spotters as they often do Mostly I simply pray for the evil of Hamas to end and for the day when everyone in this beautiful land can simply live without the constant threat of Hamas and jihadi terror.