Hebrew → English transcript

Listen, there’s one position up there,

and this one looks to me like a great position.

There are tanks on the other side,

There is willingness, there are means, you understand?

So like, if you connect the dots then it’s potential, and we need,

as people who have learned from October 7, Yom Kippur and all that, we need to keep

our finger on the pulse on this matter, to be as prepared as possible.

That’s it, to acknowledge it.

Route 10 runs along almost the entire length of the Israel– Egypt border.

One hundred short

meters separate Israeli territory from the sounds of gunfire from Egypt.

And not just gunfire. We left from Shlomit, you get to the border so fast.

Here is the Egyptian position, the Egyptian soldier sitting opposite us.

You can really hear him,

I hear him singing. Look at the open spaces,

and to think that the

IDF allows the Egyptian army to come 100 meters

from the fence. One hundred meters is the embankment.

Okay? It is less than the embankment,

it is this tree right below us.

For a really long time now, we’ve been seeing pickups here, also camels.

We see camels sitting for hours and filming the fence with their phones.

Just so you know, this week there were live- fire drills by

the Egyptian army from 6 in the morning to 7 in the evening,

about 100 meters from the border. That is the terse

wording that security coordinators and Eshkol residents got yesterday.

It is like this all the time. All the time there are exercises

right next to the border? All the time. Firing ranges, they tell everyone,

every day they tell them the Egyptians

have shooting drills.

Ask any officer in the army, ask him, who is the threat for the Egyptian army?

They will all tell you, the threat is the State of Israel.

They have no other enemy they are arming for.

Even though its area exceeds one million square kilometers, great Egypt

chooses to carry out its army training precisely so close to the Israeli border,

contrary to the peace agreements. Road 10, first of all, this tank saved us,

the Yated moshav.

A tank like this came from here to Yated very quickly to the Route 232 area and

fought on Route 232 and saved us. This just shows us how a force,

even when it looks small and even when it is small in the area,

any force, how significant it is for defending the residents.

If one day they want to attack us with tanks, it will be from here.

Meaning, if one day a massive column wants to move into Israeli territory,

this is the obvious area.

You can take it back in history to Moses our teacher,

who walked from this area with the Israelites,

and you can take it to the Egyptian army in’ 48 that came in from here and

reached Ramat Rachel. The number of tanks in the Egyptian army is much

greater than our capabilities, the armor that is on the border day to day,

and that has to be said.

It has to be said, this is a drop in the ocean. There was a reduction here in

the alert squads recently as well, right?

Yes, the permanent guard duty of the residents and of the forces that

were here was stopped.

There was some kind of local defense force here, which is a shame in my eyes,

because in the end every barrel that is here has meaning,

all the more so when it is us who are protecting our families.

Meanwhile, the only ones who remain alert and vigilant are the rapid response

squads, who constantly check the area and prepare for every explosive scenario.

There were reports here of people who heard bullets whistling over their heads,

farmers in their greenhouses too,

and also guards who were on duty here at this post. Are they wrong?

Maybe they are wrong, and maybe they are not. And after

two and a half years of war,

it is hard not to wonder what we actually learned.

We are talking about the pickup trucks that are close to the border,

about the drones, about the nearby training,

and also about reducing the standby squads.

After October 7, is there security?

Look, when you put it

that way, then no.