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The wall of a school had shattered into rubble. The minaret of a mosque was tilting to one side. The roof of a beachfront villa had vanished, leaving a maroon sofa exposed to the elements.<\/p>\n
Along the northern coastline of Gaza on Saturday afternoon, these were the signs of battle between Hamas, the Palestinian militia that controls the Gaza Strip, and the Israeli army, which had for eight days tried to oust Hamas from power. <\/p>\n
Israeli military leaders brought a small group of foreign journalists into northern Gaza on Saturday for four hours to witness the extent of the advance. A reporter for The New York Times was among them.<\/p>\n
Thousands of troops began their incursion down the coastline on Oct. 27, one part of a three-pronged invasive force that aims to vanquish Hamas, which led a brazen raid on Israel last month that killed roughly 1,400 people.<\/p>\n
Eight days later, the Israeli army has fought its way several miles to the south, reaching the outskirts of Gaza City, Hamas\u2019s stronghold, and establishing control over the northern stretch of Gaza\u2019s coastal road.<\/p>\n Less than a month ago, the northern coastline of Gaza was a quiet seafront flecked here and there with beach resorts and hotels. On Saturday, it was a giant Israeli military camp.<\/p>\n Long lines of infantry marched south along the road, blowing plumes of dust into the air. In the sand dunes east of the road, long rows of tanks and armored vehicles dominated the landscape, stretching toward the horizon.<\/p>\n Many buildings were wrecked, their walls sprayed with bullet holes. Some were most likely hit from the air during an Israeli bombing campaign that has killed more than 9,000 Gazans, according to Gaza\u2019s health authority, which is controlled by Hamas.<\/p>\n Palestinian residents had fled south, abandoning the seafront to the Israeli soldiers and a few stray dogs and cats.<\/p>\n An Israeli officer accompanying the journalists, Lt. Col. Iddo Ben-Anat, projected an image of quiet confidence.<\/p>\n Hamas had been routed here, the colonel said, forced out from its bases in the mosque with the tilting minaret and the school with the shattered wall.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s like catching a mouse,\u201d Colonel Ben-Anat said of the enemy. \u201cYou have to find him. You know he\u2019s there. You don\u2019t know where he is \u2014 but you know when you catch him, he\u2019s done.\u201d<\/p>\n Nearby, groups of soldiers gathered around portable camping stoves, boiling sweet corn and carrots, chatting and joking. Several sported well-groomed mustaches \u2014 an incongruous nod to Movember, an annual global fund-raising campaign in which men grow mustaches throughout the month of November.<\/p>\n All the political divisions in Israel of the past year \u2014 in which thousands of military reservists had threatened to refuse to serve in protest of the Israeli government \u2014 had vanished, the colonel said. Many of his men were reservists.<\/p>\n \u201cUnited, together,\u201d said Colonel Ben-Anat.<\/p>\n But drowning out these expressions of bravado were the sounds of an unfinished and undecided war.<\/p>\n Even as some soldiers cooked and rested, others had their guns drawn, scanning the horizon for assailants. At any moment, the colonel said, Hamas fighters might emerge from hidden shafts that lead to a vast underground tunnel network, hundreds of miles along, and ambush the Israeli troops.<\/p>\n Gunfire rattled constantly, and munitions flew regularly overhead.<\/p>\n Shortly after the journalists entered Gaza through a hole in the wall lining its perimeter, a mortar shell landed close to the armored vehicle that carried them south.<\/p>\n A few minutes later, a roadside bomb exploded as the vehicle passed by, creating a brief fireball and sending sand toward the sky.<\/p>\n Another barrage of mortar shells landed near the journalists after they got closer to the front line.<\/p>\n To reach the front, the journalists drove in a convoy of five tanks and two armored vehicles. A reporter for The Times traveled in an armored vehicle known as an Eitan. It had no windows: To see his surroundings, the driver looked at a digital screen that showed a live video of the road ahead.<\/p>\n