LIVE Gaza Updates

1:30 pm EET: My cameraman Dudi and I are driving on Highway 1 from Jerusalem to the Gaza border.  There’s a flat bed truck with a giant Merkava tank being transported next to us. You can see war everywhere here. Cars are being checked by police on the highway.  They’ve set up a check point where cars coming from East Jerusalem and the West Bank can be searched.

2 pm: An Israeli radio station interviewed the mother of the first Israeli soldier killed in Gaza from this operation. She said her son sent her an SMS on her cell saying:

“My dearest mother in the world.  I’m looking after myself.  You look after yourself.  We will prove to the whole world and return the honor to the people of Israel.”

Israeli military came to the kindergarten where the mother works.  When they asked if she was the mother of Staff Sergeant Dvir Emmanueloff she said, “I understood. He was dead.”   Emmanueloff was part of a Golani combat engineers unit.  He was hit by shrapnel in a mortar attack.  Dvir Emmanueloff was 22 years old.

4 pm: A kindergarten has been hit in the Israeli town of Ashdod.  That means the rocket traveled about 25 miles.  Thankfully the school was closed, but the rocket hit the playroom. We walk into the school.  Legos were scattered everywhere on the floor amongst broken glass and the crumbled building. As we prepare to go LIVE on FOX, the Red Cross uses a megaphone to tell residents in the apartment building around the kindergarten to go back to their homes.  “Go on with your lives,” the Red Cross worker says.  He also warns there could be more rockets. The kindergarten teacher from the school tells me she prays for peace on both sides.  “I’m 52 years old and living in Israel this kind of war is all we’ve known,” she tells me.

5 pm: We’re headed back to the Gaza border.

6 pm: It’s now dark.  We can see and hear a lot of military activity in Gaza.

7:30 pm: There are lots of flares in the sky.  We hear drones and helicopters above.  Tank fire can be heard, and we also hear rockets landing in Israel.

8 pm: There’s an unexpected situation inside Gaza with grave consequences for the Israeli military.

8:30 pm: We can hear sirens.

Keep checking back for the latest on the Gaza border!