On 17 April 1948 the Givati 53rd Battalion, commanded by Yitzhak Pundak, took control of the Qatra police station near Gedera using intimidation only.

On 12 May Dubno sent a report by telegram to the commander of the 53rd Battalion that: At 18:30 this evening, the Iraq Suwaydan police fort was captured by Egyptian forces, in cooperation with a number of armed villagers.

After the signal, the garage doors opened and several dozens of military vehicles left the building in the direction of al-Majdal.

At that moment, some 40 Egyptians slipped from the nearby hill into the building and seized positions within.The following day, the commander of the 53rd Battalion received information from Hagana intelligence that the Egyptian army had left the fort, which was now in the hands of local villagers, and that during the day it was manned by a symbolic force of six sentries.

When the attacking troops approached the fort, they set off powerful illumination mines, losing the element of surprise.

On the night of 10–11 June, just a few hours before the first truce of the war came into effect, a fourth attempt was made to conquer the police fort by the Negev Brigade.

However, the sun was about to rise and the operation commanders, unaware of the extent of the progress made, gave the order to retreat.

In total, the Israeli casualties were 4 dead and 12 wounded, including two men killed by fire from enemy aircraft that had come to assist the defenders.

On the night of 19–20 October, three days after the beginning of Operation Yoav, the Givati Brigade made another attempt to take the police fort.

The commander of the 51st Battalion, Jehuda L. Wallach, wrote about the reason for the failure: We did not know in advance that the building housed an Egyptian army company armed with a large number of machine guns, instead of just a "low morale platoon".Two aircraft departed on a bombing sortie in the late afternoon of 20 October.

[8][9] The 7th attack was planned after careful study of intelligence, including the interrogation of prisoners and deciphered enemy documents.

Two days after the failure of the sixth attempt, on the night of 21–22 October, Givati's 51st Battalion tried to break into the police fort, using flamethrowers installed on armored vehicles.

Leitner received the nation's highest military decoration, the Hero of Israel citation (now the Medal of Valor), for this display of heroism.

Meanwhile, an armored vehicle heavily laden with explosives (driven by volunteer Yosef 'Adawi) managed to reach a distance of 30 meters from the fortress.

At this point, an anti-tank missile fired from the direction of the nearby villages (Iraq Suwaydan and Bayt 'Affa) hit the vehicle and caused the explosives to detonate.

While the explosion was premature, it breached the barbed-wire fences and allowed the attacking force to reach the west side of the fort.

On 22 October, at the end of Operation Yoav, IDF forces succeeded in taking control of large areas of the Negev and breaking through to Beersheba.

The capture of the Huleiqat and Bayt Jibrin outposts left the Egyptian 4th Brigade, under the command of Sudanese general Said Taha Bey, besieged in an enclave that was given the name of the "Faluja pocket".

[13] Analysis of the previous attempts to capture the fort led Yitzhak Sadeh to the conclusion that all seven previous attempts failed because the attacking forces did not initially try to paralyze enemy fire and destroy its sources, evidently due to the lack of the necessary means to do so in the Givati and Negev brigades.

After analyzing the terrain, Sadeh and his staff officers were able to find an access route to the fort from the northwest direction.

[3] According to Sadeh's original plan, the attack would begin with an artillery bombardment by the 88th Battalion on the fort and the villages of Iraq Suwaydan and Beit 'Affa.

[3] The commando and armored units would move in two waves from the northwest, under the cover of the setting sun, and breach the police fort.

[2][12] The cannons fired directly, in order to force the Egyptians to abandon their defensive posts and go inside the building.

[15] Meanwhile, Israeli mechanized forces were met with stiff resistance in the village of Iraq Suwaydan, and two armored vehicles were hit by Egyptian artillery.

The driver of the first vehicle, Private Siman-Tov Gana, was severely injured but provided cover fire for the rest of the force as it retreated, and was awarded the Hero of Israel citation for his efforts.

[2] The capture of the area by the 8th Brigade reduced the ongoing threat to nearby Jewish settlements, particularly Kibbutz Negba, which had suffered from artillery shelling over a long period of time.