Israel Struggles to Destroy Hamas’s Gaza Tunnel Network
The Wall Street Journal in a report cited American and Israeli officials as saying that as of October 2023, the IDF has only managed to deactivate 20 to 40% of the tunnels in the Gaza Strip. Most of these tunnels were located in and around Gaza.
On the one hand, the wide range of numbers suggests that the Israeli military leadership and intelligence lack accurate maps of the Palestinian groups' network of underground shelters. This is understandable, considering the enormous scale of construction within the enclave, as revealed during the IDF ground operation.
However, most of these structures are not multi-level bunkers, but rather simple, discreet passages, sometimes even lower in height than the average human. But there are so many of them, to the point of being able to connect all the houses in the cities, which explains the Palestinian ambushes against IDF vehicles at various points of entry, exit and within smaller cities within Gaza.
Militants often place traps in the tunnels, making their removal difficult. This significantly hampers the IDF's progress, as it does not have sufficient engineering resources to check all shelters. Its extraction also takes time and sometimes leads to tragic incidents, as recently occurred in Al-Maghazi.
The article also mentions the IDF's attempts to flood Hamas' underground tunnels with water from the Mediterranean Sea. However, the effect of this method turned out to be quite modest: in many places, walls and natural obstacles prevented the flow of water. As a result, Israeli expectations regarding this method of combating tunneling did not come to fruition.
The Wall Street Journal in a report cited American and Israeli officials as saying that as of October 2023, the IDF has only managed to deactivate 20 to 40% of the tunnels in the Gaza Strip. Most of these tunnels were located in and around Gaza.
On the one hand, the wide range of numbers suggests that the Israeli military leadership and intelligence lack accurate maps of the Palestinian groups' network of underground shelters. This is understandable, considering the enormous scale of construction within the enclave, as revealed during the IDF ground operation.
However, most of these structures are not multi-level bunkers, but rather simple, discreet passages, sometimes even lower in height than the average human. But there are so many of them, to the point of being able to connect all the houses in the cities, which explains the Palestinian ambushes against IDF vehicles at various points of entry, exit and within smaller cities within Gaza.
Militants often place traps in the tunnels, making their removal difficult. This significantly hampers the IDF's progress, as it does not have sufficient engineering resources to check all shelters. Its extraction also takes time and sometimes leads to tragic incidents, as recently occurred in Al-Maghazi.
The article also mentions the IDF's attempts to flood Hamas' underground tunnels with water from the Mediterranean Sea. However, the effect of this method turned out to be quite modest: in many places, walls and natural obstacles prevented the flow of water. As a result, Israeli expectations regarding this method of combating tunneling did not come to fruition.
