I first met Maj. Y., a 41-year-old reservist and father of five, on a dusty Humvee during a nighttime ride out of Gaza’s Jabaliya refugee camp toward the 98th Division's staging area near the Black Arrow memorial. The vehicle rattled over the summer windblown terrain, headlights dim, drivers squinting through worn night-vision goggles, navigating a stop-start convoy.
I asked him who he was. “A new unit—we’re still stitching it together. Let’s call ourselves ‘The Wolves,’” he said with excitement, his face covered by a thin hood. “Come back, write a story about us.”
The Wolves operating in Gaza
(Video: IDF)
A year later, the unit hasn't let go of its mission, and this article brings the story full circle. They aren’t seeking media attention or praise—they’re looking for recognition to recruit more people. Maj. Y. is one of only 30 soldiers in this mostly reservist force whose purpose is to serve as an elite forward-scouting team for company and battalion commanders operating in enemy territory.
“Call them wolves, not trackers,” corrects Lt. Col. (res.) B., the 63-year-old unit commander and founder. “Trackers do excellent work, mostly on borders and in routine security missions. Our unit operates offensively. The IDF sorely needed this—people who know how to feel the ground, sense the wind, pause, and find footprints left by terrorists who just entered a house in Shuja’iyya we thought had already been cleared by a drone.”
B. has the rugged air of an old-school kibbutznik—gray hair, no patience for political correctness. Despite the uniform, he makes the occasional sharp political remark but is quick to emphasize, “We’ve got guys from farms in the Shomron, city folks from Tel Aviv, moshavniks. It’s a strong mix of all backgrounds. Everyone reports for duty, regardless of their views. We train veteran fighters in two to three weeks to become maneuver warfare trackers and send them to embed with operational units. We began in Khan Younis in March 2024 and have been operating across Gaza since. Over 10 battalion commanders and three brigade commanders have fought over us.”
What’s your mission in practice?
“Simple: prevent IDF casualties, especially from explosives. Knock on wood—we’ve done that. Y. was wounded three times, so was I, and one of our men, but minor stuff—don’t worry. Everyone’s on their feet, preparing for the next major operation in Gaza. Our people understand the terrain, and in today’s urban warfare, that skill is vanishing.”
Lt. Col. B. is so driven that he conducts many of the unit’s trainings not at IDF bases but in abandoned buildings and orchards near his kibbutz in central Israel—like a modern-day Palmach fighter. “It feels like the kibbutz movement in the '50s, when even older folks looked for ways to pitch in. During the First Lebanon War, I was a young officer who came home and saw antiwar protests—that didn’t sit well with me as a soldier. But ‘together’ isn’t just a slogan. Only together can you win.”
They were hunting terrorists. He was hunting ground
The idea for the Wolves came to Maj. Y. at exactly 7:10 a.m. on October 7, 2023. He left his house in the south, on his initiative, looking for a unit to fight with. His former unit, "Maarul," formed after the 2014 kidnapping and murder of teens Eyal Yifrach, Gil-Ad Shaer, and Naftali Fraenkel, wasn’t relevant for the Southern Command.
“It started as a dream,” he recalls. “We called it the Wolves because we work like lone wolves—sent ahead of the main forces and scattered across combat zones, not together. That morning, I arrived at the entrance to Sderot and met the undercover Border Police unit. They were looking for terrorists; I was looking for ground. I joined them, and from Sderot we went on to battles in Be’eri and at the Nova music festival. I helped track blood trails that led to terrorists and signs of hostages. We even discovered a terrorist hiding in the bushes.”
Seeing the impact of a forward tracker in a fast-moving event, Y. pulled together fellow combat veterans with fieldcraft skills. Together with Lt. Col. B., and with the backing of the Southern Command deputy commander, Maj. Gen. (res.) Yossi Bachar, the unit was born. It began improvised and under fire in Gaza—but has since chalked up one success after another.
“Our Wolves, clearly and unequivocally, have identified and thwarted about 30 IED sites just before soldiers walked into them,” says Lt. Col. B “We’ve also spotted dozens of exposed areas vulnerable to enemy snipers. But the biggest success is spreading our know-how throughout the army—basic techniques for detecting ground disturbances, suspicious markings, and above all, patience under fire. Even after casualties, don’t open closets with your hands when clearing a building—terrorists hide bombs in drawers. Early in the operation, no one checked those. Hamas adapted, and we had to, too.”
The Wolves use covert detection technologies normally reserved for elite units, as well as small drones for indoor sweeps. Patience is key. Y. and B. admit they sometimes pull their hair out reading incident debriefs involving wounded soldiers, often from IEDs, which have become Hamas’ weapon of choice.
“In an attack, a fighter’s instinct is to scan through doorways with their weapon,” they explain. “But that means they miss a lot on the floor. We’ve developed new combat doctrines to address this—combining classic urban warfare with ground tracking.”
Training the army, one step at a time
Just days before I met Maj. Y. near Jabaliya last year, soldiers from the 890th Battalion had pulled off something rare: a high-speed daytime pursuit of a terrorist squad through the refugee camp’s alleys. “The terrorists infiltrated a defensive position and were chased off quickly. The battalion commander ordered troops to the rooftops. I was next to him and suggested chasing them on foot—normally, why that’s an Air Force drone mission. He went with it. I tracked blood trails between buildings, and we found them on a rooftop. Our guys took them out.”
Two months later, in Shuja’iyya, another success: terrorists opened fire from a hidden spot in the crowded Gaza City neighborhood and wounded a Paratroopers reconnaissance officer. No one saw where the shots came from—until the embedded Wolf, suspecting the gunman had ducked into a building, flew in a small drone. It revealed subtle signs of presence. The terrorist was killed before he could flee.
“In another Shuja’iyya event, we knew terrorists were heading toward us, but didn’t know from where,” Y. adds. “So we adjusted our route and ran into them. Had we acted differently—or the company commander hadn’t trusted the Wolf with him—that story could have ended badly.”
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In northern Gaza, during a sweep by the 101st Battalion, troops had just cleared a building and were about to leave when the attached Wolf spotted a fresh footprint at the door. “He stopped them. Inside, we found three Islamic Jihad terrorists who had entered after the drone sweeps and were lying in wait,” Y. says. “We shelled the house, tossed grenades, and killed them.”
In another incident during December 2023 near Gaza’s coastal Rashid corridor, an IED exploded near reservists from the 179th Brigade. Y., with them at the time, urged calm, not a rush. “I walked along the IED wires and found a hidden enemy post, packed with weapons, directly facing the path our troops had just taken. We lost an officer in that incident, but by stopping to study the scene, we uncovered and neutralized a more serious ambush intended to kill and kidnap.”
Now, the Wolves are preparing for the IDF’s next phase in Gaza. They hope to integrate into more divisions, ike the 36th, now active in Rafah. Lt. Col. B. believes that if the IDF had 130 Wolves instead of 30, many deadly incidents could have been prevented.
“Battalions come and go, and the knowledge from one area doesn’t always get passed down,” he says. “Our people love the terrain, breathe it, smell threats. Hamas now stages attacks to bait rescue teams. I hope we’ll become obsolete, only because we’ve passed on our skills, just like we did in Syria and Lebanon these past months. Before this war, the IDF climbed high with cyber and tech, but something got lost in translating that to real ground warfare.”