____________________________________________ 2 IICC Perspectives January 2024, just days before the ceasefire and the start of the hostage deal, was one of the IDF's most difficult months in the northern Gaza Strip. Within a few days during the second week of the month, ten IDF soldiers were killed in Beit Hanoun. Col. D., commander of the Captured Enemy Documents Unit (CED): "The last incident, in which five soldiers were killed, was on Saturday morning. That same evening, after the chief of staff's situational assessment, I got a call at home from the chief of staff's office asking to confirm that we had exhausted all available material on Beit Hanoun to make sure the fighting forces there were using CED materials to continue the operation. After 464 days of fighting, everyone knew that CED could guide maneuvers precisely and save lives. We often warned forces before they walked into traps or dangerous locations, or guided them to success in their missions." *** The CED Unit, responsible for collecting intelligence and technical materials, has existed in various forms since the establishment of the State of Israel. It moved from body to body, organization to organization, sometimes as a regular unit, sometimes as a reserve unit, in large and small versions. Sometimes it was a platoon, sometimes a company, sometimes a battalion, sometimes a company within a battalion. At times it was under Central Command, at other times under Military Intelligence, but most of the time, in its various forms, it was part of Unit 8200. Its activity expanded and contracted according to the situation on the ground. Before a major operation or during a war, the unit was activated and everyone was pleased. After a while, when the collected material had been exhausted and there was no operational friction, the unit's activity was frozen. That went on for years. "We often warned forces before they entered traps or dangerous locations, or guided them to success in their mission." The last time the CED Unit was activated before the Gaza Strip War was during Operation Protective Edge in 2014. When it ended the unit disintegrated. Personnel stopped being assigned to it, reserve call-ups ended, resources were no longer allocated and it was no longer integrated into training exercises. The message was clear, operational capabilities were lost and qualifications faded. The unit disappeared from the commanders and soldiers' consciousness, and more importantly and worse, Military Intelligence no longer recognized it as a source of intelligence. D.: "The IDF and Intelligence fell in love with cyber, fell in love with campaign-betweenwars operations, and the unit was completely shut down from 2018 to October 2023. Then we were hit with a scenario unlike anything in the history of the unit, or any CED unit in the world. In past deployments the unit would be sent with the forces into enemy territory to collect the documents and other materials., Most of the time it was maps, radios, sometimes documents, and only in rare cases did anyone recall how it really
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