Gaza Tunnels
Updated 2024-08-25
2024-08-21 Gallant says 150 tunnels have been destroyed along Egypt-Gaza border, Hamas’s Rafah Brigade defeated Defense Minister Yoav Gallant says more than 150 tunnels have been demolished along the Philadelphi Corridor, the Egypt-Gaza border area, and that Hamas’s Rafah Brigade has been defeated.
“The most important thing… is to remember what the goals of the war are, to meet all the goals of the war, both regarding Hamas and also regarding the hostages, and to look north now,” Gallant says to troops stationed in the Philadelphi Corridor area. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/gallant-says-150-tunnels-have-been-destroyed-along-egypt-gaza-border-hamas-s-rafah-brigade-defeated/ar-AA1pbXDu?
2024-01-06 How Palestinian resistance employs tunnels to fight invaders, with Jon Elmer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k13-pwjPGKM
2023-12-05 Israel may flood Gaza tunnels to flush out Hamas: Report Hamas continues to hold Israeli captives in its extensive tunnel network under the besieged enclave. Israel has assembled a large system of pumps that may be used to flood tunnels used by Hamas under the Gaza strip in a bid to drive out itst fighters, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on 5 December. Citing US officials, the WSJ reported that in mid-November the Israel army completed the set-up of at least five pumps about a mile north of the Al-Shati refugee camp on the Gaza coast. The pumps, which can move thousands of cubic meters of water per hour, will allegedly be used to flood the tunnels within the coming weeks.
It was not clear whether Israel would consider using the pumps before all captives held by Hamas in the besieged enclave were released. Hamas has previously said it has hidden the captives it took during its 7 October surprise attack in “safe places and tunnels.” https://new.thecradle.co/articles/israel-may-flood-gaza-tunnels-to-flush-out-hamas-report
2023-11-20 What Israel’s video of ‘Hamas tunnel’ under al-Shifa tells us The Israeli military also released a video that was recorded using two separate cameras on November 17. Spokesperson Daniel Hagari told reporters the entrance was uncovered when a military bulldozer knocked down the outside wall of the hospital, revealing a metallic spiral staircase that descended 10m (32ft) and led to a blast door, which is typically a metallic door with strong closures and hinges, designed to resist explosions. Such doors are usually found on facilities such as bomb shelters.
But military analyst Zoran Kusovac quoted a civil engineer from Gaza who suggested that the video is actually clips of two different tunnels spliced together. The first section of the video shows the vertical shaft that goes down. It shows features such as load-bearing concrete columns. They seem to be built with regular civil engineering techniques, which would have required large and loud machines such as concrete mixers. Such a construction could not have been done in secret, the way Hamas tunnels are usually built. The purpose of this construction remains unknown. Satellite images and archival photos showed that the hatch that Israel claimed was the tunnel entrance was actually part of a water reservoir system that was used to fill therapeutic pools for amputees, water the grounds, and also was an emergency water source.
The second part of the clip shows the horizontal tunnel. This displays features characteristic of Hamas tunnels — pre-fabricated pieces connected together section by section. A control centre has not been found so far. Israeli troops have not yet tried to open the blast door at the end of the tunnel that they claim was under al-Shifa, fearing it could be booby-trapped, said Hagari.
Tunnels in Gaza were first built in 1980 at a time when the enclave was under Israeli occupation, and before the formation of Hamas in 1987. They were constructed under the Egyptian border for smuggling all sorts of goods, including weapons, fuel and black market goods. Over time, Palestinians realised that tunnels could have a military use.
Israel placed a blockade on the Gaza Strip after Hamas gained control of it in 2007. Tunnels became the means to bypass the siege and to transport food, goods and weapons. Under Hamas, the tunnels expanded strategically. The tunnels are also used by Hamas for wired communications, since Israel can intercept wireless communications. After attacking Gaza in 2014, Israel realised the extent and sophistication of the tunnels, then believed to have surpassed 100km (62 miles).
A tunnel war would entail a whole lot of destruction. The magnitude of explosives would be larger and deadlier than usual due to the smaller area of the tunnels. For the same reason, the use of regular ammunition might be too “clumsy” and hence unviable. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/what-israel-s-video-of-hamas-tunnel-under-al-shifa-tells-us/ar-AA1keSDk
2023-11-06 Here are 3 Ways the U.S. Media Tries to Justify Israel’s Attacks on Civilians in Gaza From the use of terms such as “human shields,” “terror tunnels” and “Hamas strongholds,” media outlets are covering for Israel’s devastating bombing campaign on Palestinians.
Over the past two weeks, the New York Times ran three different articles full of hand wringing over what to do about the scary reality of Hamas’ underground tunnel network in Gaza. Such a network, to some extent, no doubt exists. Many Palestinians have argued it’s more of a network for smuggling harmless goods in and out of Gaza due to the Israeli blockade preventing imports and exports, rather than a sprawling, sophisticated underground lair teaming with James Bond-like Hamas villains. The tunnels in Gaza almost certainly serve a combination of functions, for Hamas and non-Hamas-affiliated Palestinians alike, but the breathless coverage of the alleged “terror tunnels” serves one primary purpose: to justify massive civilian death. Reporters at the Times have focused intently on the “terror tunnel” issue, including lead liberal opinion-shaper David Leonhardt, who built a whole article around it for his very popular daily newsletter.
Citing a 2014 Washington Post article—an article that largely relies on Israeli and pro-Israel sources — Leonhardt casually asserts that these tunnels are deliberately placed under hospitals, schools, and mosques so that they can be used as protection from bunker busters aiming for the tunnels. Surely, such a major claim would require more neutral sourcing, or evidence, or some type of demonstrable methodology for coming to this conclusion
There are also two massive holes in the ghoulish logic of “we have to kill civilians because the terror tunnels leave no other option,”
why doesn’t Israel publish a map of the tunnels and advise civilians to avoid these areas? Israel has provided such information about so-called “safe zones” in the past; it has also bombed those “safe zones.” In theory, the Israeli government could provide a clear map of the “terror tunnels” — they supposedly know where the tunnels are. Yet, it doesn’t do this.
An enemy “blending with civilians” was the exact same logic the U.S. used to justify killing millions of Vietnamese civilians in its decades-long war against the Vietnamese insurgency. “That’s the same crap we did in Vietnam,”
Ultimately, scare stories about Hamas “terror tunnels” have no practical journalistic effect other than militarizing the whole of Gazan society. After all, if the “terror tunnels” are everywhere, and are legitimate military targets, then any civilian standing in any Gazan population center is little more than a Hamas “human shield.” https://inthesetimes.com/article/israel-palestine-media-hamas-human-shields-war-civilians-gaza
2023-10-31 THE LABYRINTH WAR More than 8,000 residents of the Gaza Strip have been killed so far, forty percent of them children, according to the international aid group Defense for Children, in retaliation for Hamas’s terrorist attack on an all-night Israeli dance party, kibbutzim, and small farming villages in the south of Israel on October 7. Hamas still holds more than 230 Israeli hostages it seized on that murderous Saturday, when scarcely any Israeli forces appeared on the scene for as long as ten hours.
The Israeli death count for the Hamas attack of October 7 now stands at 1,400 and includes 317 members of the Israeli military—some of those victims may be military contractors—and 58 policemen. At least thirty Americans, according to the State Department, many of them working for NGOs, were also killed, and thirteen Americans are still unaccounted for. Dozens of those captured by Hamas—among them the very young and the very old—never made it to its tunnel system because they fell or, more likely, were flung off the bicycles or motorcycles that were carrying them and were immediately executed.
The Hamas tunnels “were dazzling in their ingenuity,” I was told by an official who helped Israel map the tunnels and come to grips with the threat posed by easy citywide access for Hamas fighters. “There were administrative tunnels, command-and-control tunnels, and storage tunnels throughout Gaza City.” he said, with hundreds of entry points. It was decided after the October 7 attack that “all buildings with terminal exits and entry points had to be bombed.”
The amount of dirt and debris removed for the underground construction in Gaza City, the official said, was estimated to amount to 75 million cubic feet—a total whose disposal would require 140,000 dumpsters. The official used an analogy to describe the project, which was closely monitored for years by outside experts working with Israeli intelligence: enough material was removed to build the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt.
In my recent reporting, I’ve been told that at the time of the October raid as many as 15,000 to 20,000 fighters were living and training in the vast system, which included heat, light, and ventilation, even air-conditioning. The citywide access made it possible for many to come and go to their families in Gaza City.
The talks, as described by an Israeli source, are underway even as Israeli special forces and regular army soldiers are in the Gaza Strip penetrating tunnels from known access points and destroying exits and ventilation ducts as they move. The main goal of the penetrations thus far has been to determine where the hostages are being held. There has been little resistance, I have been told, with only one significant casualty as of Sunday. Many of the tunnels are believed to have collapsed as a result of the heavy bombing, and it is not clear how long the Hamas fighters can survive, despite its heavy stockpiling of food and water. I also have been told that there is no power throughout the underground tunnel system and all the fighters and hostages are living in the dark. https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/the-labyrinth-war
2014-07-26 The Long History Of The Gaza Tunnels Israel certainly had been aware of Gaza tunnels before this war. First, it’s an ancient practice. In his forthcoming book, Gaza: A History, Jean-Pierre Filiu describes the “first historic reference to the loose subsoil of Gaza” during Alexander the Great’s 332 BC siege of this Mediterranean city, then under Persian rule.
In more recent times, Palestinians subverted Israeli controls over travel, imports and exports to and from the Gaza Strip by digging tunnels to south, into Egypt. Cars, cows, and cigarettes came through what were commonly called smuggling tunnels, although Hamas taxed what it could after it came to power 2006. Cheap Egyptian gasoline kept Gaza going when Israel fuel was too expensive. Weapons and sometimes people travelled through those commercial tunnels too.
Hamas also used a tunnel from Gaza to enter Israel and kidnap an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, in 2006. He was held for five years, until Israel agreed to free more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners.
The tunnels to Egypt have been largely shut down in the past year, following the ouster of Egyptian leader Mohammed Morsi, whose Muslim Brotherhood was sympathetic to Hamas. Under the current Egyptian President, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Egypt has bulldozed those tunnels, stifling the already weak Gazan economy.
The network of military tunnels snaking north and east into Israel were likely dug over several years. But they only began to be exposed in the past year or so, even as the commercial tunnels to Egypt were being shut down. Heavy flooding last year revealed some. The Israeli military found one last fall near a kibbutz and much bigger one this spring. Extensive Israeli media coverage may have helped cement worry of infiltration in the Israeli public’s mind.
In retaliation, Israel stopped permitting concrete to be brought into Gaza — a concession that had only recently been won. These militant tunnels are not mole holes. Some are tall enough to stand in, reinforced with concrete and equipped with electricity and phone lines in some cases. https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2014/07/26/335332220/the-long-history-of-the-gaza-tunnels
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