ABC News embeds with IDF inside Gaza: Reporter's notebook

I have just returned from a brief embed inside Gaza with the Israel Defense Forces. We travelled a few miles across the border with a handful of foreign journalists.

It is a scene of utter devastation and remains a highly active and dangerous battle. Building after building is scarred and blackened by the bombardment, the incessant tank fire and flares soaring across the sky

The landscape is desolate. To the distance lies Gaza city.

"Nowhere is safe," the deputy commander tells me. A veteran of past wars, he says this time has to be different, that Hamas cannot be allowed to attack Israel again. I asked him about the huge civilian death toll and he insisted the IDF is doing all it can to minimize casualties.

The devastation all around suggests a less cautious approach.

We joined a convoy of a few dozen heavily armed soldiers, and more than ten tanks and armored personnel carriers. At one point an explosion and flames to the side of the road, an IED or mine.

When we finally dismounted, the air was thick with dust and smoke. The sound of war interrupts the uneasy moments of silence; the crackle of gunfire, the crump of tank fire.

This is an army full of determination and confidence, it has immense firepower at its disposal but the urban warfare they are in is perhaps the most dangerous an army can face.

How long will this last? It seems an almost open-ended mission. Think months at best.

The deputy commander said his daughter's birthday is in January and he hopes that by then he will be home again with his family.