In the 60 minutes it takes to watch “Observation / The Field Observers of the Gaza Sector,” a video installation by filmmaker Talya Lavie at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, viewers hear from 10 women who served as IDF surveillance soldiers in the Gaza border region.

The exhibit, on display through April 11, is an opportunity to bear witness to the fate of 14 female field observers who were killed at the Nahal Oz outpost during the bloody Hamas-led invasion of October 7, 2023.

Female surveillance IDF soldiers, in Hebrew tatzpitaniyot, operate along the country’s borders as well as throughout the West Bank as part of the Border Defense Corps’ combat intelligence array.

The surveillance soldiers are referred to by many as “the eyes of the army,” as they provide real-time intelligence information to soldiers in the field 24/7.

For months before Hamas’s onslaught, surveillance soldiers reported signs of suspicious activity on the Gaza side of the border, less than a mile from them. No action was taken by the more senior officers who received the reports, and the information was disregarded as unimportant by intelligence officials.

The soldiers’ reports included information on Hamas operatives conducting training sessions multiple times a day, digging holes and placing explosives along the border. Soldiers believe sexism played a part in the fact that their warnings were not heeded.

Lavie, whose first film, the award-winning 2014 black comedy “Zero Motivation,” told the story of a unit of female Israeli soldiers at a remote desert base biding their time until they could return to civilian life, found herself deeply shaken by the tragedy of the surveillance soldiers killed by Hamas terrorists as they sat in the command center or hid in safe rooms.

“I found myself thinking about them constantly, with grief and with anger, and I felt a strong need to do something with it,” Lavie told The Times of Israel. “I decided to write a script for a feature film inspired by their story.”

She began researching a feature film about the field observers — the English term she chose to use for the tatzpitaniyot — inspired by the story of those stationed at the Nahal Oz outpost. Lavie said she will begin filming the movie, which is titled “Seven Eyes” and is being produced by Spiro Films, in the next few months.

All of the characters in the feature film are fictional. However, the script draws on real events as recounted in dozens of testimonies recorded by Lavie with former field observers as part of her research.

“In December 2023, I posted on Facebook that I was looking to meet former field observers as part of my research,” wrote Lavie in a series of text messages with The Times of Israel. “Within two hours, my inbox was flooded. Hundreds of women wrote to me. Women who had served on different borders, at different times. Some had been discharged from the army 20 years earlier. All of them wanted to share their experiences, as if they had been waiting for a long time to finally speak.”

The meetings, carried out with Lavie’s producers, a close friend, and her small research team, were intense and emotionally charged, said the filmmaker, and she wanted to preserve the experience of meeting them.

“These women were remarkable, and I wanted to preserve the raw experience of meeting them before their stories were shaped into narrative or fictional form,” said Lavie. “Some of the women chose to remain anonymous, but most agreed to appear under their full names, and many of them were willing to be filmed, forming a powerful and diverse chorus.”

Tel Aviv Museum of Art head curator Mira Lapidot curated the installation, which features a repeat loop of the hourlong footage of the 10 women, each of whom served as a surveillance soldier between 2016 and 2024, talking about all aspects of their work.

Tension builds as the interviews, conducted close up against a black background, move from women who served as surveillance soldiers before October 7 to those who were serving during the time of the attack.

Lavie said she realized at some point that the timeline was a key element in the story, and left each testimony whole, organizing them chronologically.

“As the work progresses, the years move forward, and the women become younger and younger,” she said. “The experience becomes increasingly unsettling for the viewer, as October 7th is approaching, and at the same time, you become more and more involved.”

Each woman’s story weaves the personal and professional, recounting how young women entering the army end up in this role, the responsibilities they bear, and the relationships and solidarity they experience as they train and serve together on the Gaza border.

Lavie said she knew that field observers monitor the border through screens in a command-and-control room, but hadn’t realized how physically close they were to the border itself. Seemingly protected inside the outpost, they are in reality very exposed.

In the interviews, the women describe staring at the cameras trained on the border and the friendships formed through intimate conversations held during long shifts, without eye contact, as the observers are forbidden to look away from their screens.

“The observers need to keep their eyes fixed on the screen in front of them and never look away, not even for a second; they must remain vigilant for any impending incidents or tiny movements,” said Lavie. “They get so used to not moving their eyes from the screen, no matter what, and many of them describe this element as something they just can’t get rid of, even years later, even when they’re alone at home, watching a TV series on their computer.”

According to other accounts from surveillance soldiers, a kind of intimacy also sprang up between the observers and those they were observing. Hamas terrorists spent years closely monitoring troops’ social media accounts and knew the phone numbers of some officers and the license plates of IDF vehicles.

Bereaved father Eyal Eshel has said that his daughter, Roni Eshel, a surveillance soldier killed on October 7, told him that on her 19th birthday in September 2023, several weeks before the October 7 attack, a Hamas terrorist held up a sign from the other side of the Gaza border fence that read, “Congratulations.”

Lavie noted that unlike civilians in the nearby kibbutz communities or the young people at the Nova music festival, the soldiers had a view of the terrorists preparing for the atrocities that were about to unfold.

“For a long time, they had been witnessing what later became clear to be preparations for an attack,” said Lavie. “Their role is to guard communities, civilians, and soldiers in the field, yet on that Saturday, no one was guarding them, and nothing could protect them when the same scenes they’ve observed on the screen erupted with murderous violence into the very command-and-control room they were in.”

If so, we have a request. 

Every day during the past two years of war and rising global anti-Zionism and antisemitism, our journalists kept you abreast of the most important developments that merit your attention. Millions of people rely on ToI for fact-based coverage of Israel and the Jewish world. 

We care about Israel - and we know you do too. So we have an ask for this new year of 2026: express your values by joining The Times of Israel Community, an exclusive group for readers like you who appreciate and financially support our work. 

We’re really pleased that you’ve read X Times of Israel articles in the past month.

You clearly find our careful reporting valuable, in a time when facts are often distorted and news coverage often lacks context.

Your support is essential to continue our work. We want to continue delivering the professional journalism you value, even as the demands on our newsroom have grown dramatically since October 7.

So today, please consider joining our reader support group, The Times of Israel Community. For as little as $6 a month you'll become our partners while enjoying The Times of Israel AD-FREE, as well as accessing exclusive content available only to Times of Israel Community members.

Thank you,David Horovitz, Founding Editor of The Times of Israel

1 Swiss TV calls Israeli Olympic bobsleigh captain a ‘supporter of genocide’ in Gaza

2 Vance: Nuclear talks showed some progress, but Iran won’t acknowledge Trump’s red lines

3 Iran’s FM says ‘guiding principles’ agreed on with US after 2nd round of nuclear talks

4 Smotrich to Arab MKs: It’s not the government’s fault ‘you murder one another’

5 ObituaryRev. Jesse Jackson, US civil rights icon with rocky ties to Jews, dies at 84

6 AnalysisBnei Brak riot shows that to integrate Haredim, Israel should expect strife

7 2026 Winter OlympicsJubilant Israeli team celebrates last-place finish in Olympic 2-man bobsleigh event

8 10 settler rabbis warn against ‘violence of any sort,’ amid attacks on Palestinians

Tel Aviv Museum of Art

© The Times of Israel