In the days before they got their emergency call-up notices, the fellows in Kobi Dahan’s Israel Defense Forces (IDF) company constantly contacted one another through their joint WhatsApp group and on Facebook. Dahan, a reserve soldier in a Givati Brigade infantry battalion, says, “From the first day of the Protective Edge operation, I drove my platoon commander crazy, asking him when, when will they call us? All the soldiers from the company kept insisting, and I’m sure the entire battalion, too. Everyone talked about it and waited for the call-up notice to arrive. When it finally arrived, everyone was happy.”

Dahan, 29, from the southern town of Netivot, is married and the father of a 2-month-old girl. He felt a true sense of mission: His battalion helps guard the localities in the Gaza Envelope area. As a resident of Israel’s south, Dahan feels that this is “a war over our home front, in every way possible.”

He adds, “We would have preferred to enter Gaza and do our best there, expressing our capabilities inside the Gaza Strip. But we do what we are told to do, and that’s no less important. There are people like me, who live in the south in towns such as Ofakim, Ashdod and Beer Sheva, who get hit by rockets; that’s their reality. And then they tell you to go and protect your own home front — that’s exactly what it is. To stop the shooting on your house, your family, your friends.”

Therefore, Dahan says, he was disappointed when a cease-fire was declared Aug. 5 and Israeli forces were pulled out of Gaza. “There were those who said that maybe it’s best to get out,” he said. “In the week and a half that the soldiers were inside, there were so many losses. But many of my friends in the company, and in the battalion too, were very disappointed. Once we’ve been called to reserve duty with an emergency call-up notice, we want to do the job properly –— go all the way in dealing with the rocket and tunnel threats.”