Just after midnight on Tuesday, the Israel Defense Forces introduced that that they had struck a tunnel that allowed Hamas to “infiltrate Israel through the sea.”
The sea tunnel was uncommon, an indication that Hamas has designed lethal new methods to assault Israel. The armed group has miles of tunnels beneath the Gaza Strip — a U.S. official likened them to “miniature cities” — however the exit to this one was on a seashore.
Among the potential causes Israel delayed sending troops into Gaza after the Hamas assault on Oct. 7, one stands out, navy specialists say: the tunnels.
Underneath the tiny coastal strip and its greater than 2 million individuals is an unlimited community of subterranean pathways, rooms, cells and even roads for autos. Hamas, which oversees Gaza, is believed to cover weapons, fighters and even command facilities within the warren of underground chambers.
Overnight on Saturday, Israeli fighter planes struck 150 underground targets within the northern Gaza Strip, the Israeli navy stated.
For the Israeli forces who participate in any large-scale floor invasion, some of the daunting challenges would be the tunnels, which Hamas has spent years refining. For the individuals who dwell above the tunnels, some of the scary propositions shall be the right way to survive the subterranean warfare.
“We should have no illusions about how this is going to be,” stated Gen. Joseph L. Votel, the previous chief of United States Central Command, which is liable for the Middle East. “It will be bloody, brutal fighting.”
In an interview, he recalled the ultimate days of the battle for the Iraqi metropolis of Mosul, the place Islamic State fighters hid in a series of tunnels in 2017. “Our Iraqi soldiers were clearing out, using bulldozers, ISIS fighters who were literally dug into the rubble,” he stated. “It was very, very brutal.”
Tunnels have been part of life in Gaza for years, however they sharply multiplied after 2007, when Hamas took management of the enclave and Israel tightened its blockade. Palestinians responded by constructing lots of of tunnels to smuggle in meals, items, individuals and weapons.
The tunnels value Hamas about $3 million every, in accordance with the Israeli navy. Some are made with prefabricated concrete and iron, and have medical rooms for offering support to wounded fighters. Others have areas 130 ft under floor the place individuals can cover for months.
In Israel, individuals usually confer with the tunnel system as “lower Gaza” or the “metro.”
Yocheved Lifshitz, an 85-year-old lady who was held hostage by Hamas for 17 days this month, described being marched for miles by way of a “spider web” of tunnels. She instructed reporters on Tuesday that Hamas militants led her by way of the moist and humid underground corridors to “a big hall where some 25 kidnapped were concentrated.”
After two or three hours, they put 5 individuals from her kibbutz in a separate room, she stated.
At a information convention on Friday, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, an Israeli navy spokesman, accused Hamas of constructing tunnels and different services beneath Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza, the territory’s largest medical middle. He performed an intercepted audio recording and displayed an illustration of the subterranean complicated.
General Votel, who visited a tunnel managed by the Lebanese militia Hezbollah close to Israel’s border, stated he was “taken aback at the level of effort that is involved in creating these things.”
“This wasn’t just holes in the ground, it was an architecture,” he stated. “They were linked to rooms and built in a way to withstand strikes to the surface.”
As Hamas expanded the underground system, it hid the entrances to the tunnels in homes and different small buildings on Egypt’s aspect of the border, stated Joel Roskin, a geology professor at Bar-Ilan University in Israel who studied tunnels throughout his time within the Israeli navy. Those tunnels allowed items to be smuggled in from Egypt.
The tunnel system stretches all the best way to the Israeli border within the north.
A decade in the past, Egypt undertook an effort to destroy the tunnels alongside its border, dumping sewage into some and leveling homes that hid entrances, Mr. Roskin stated.
Israel has restricted visibility into tunnel exercise on the Egyptian aspect of the border, he added. Many of the networks finish in Northern Sinai, however the Egyptian authorities has hardly ever allowed Israeli researchers or authorities officers to go to the world, so it’s not clear what number of cross-border tunnels stay.
On Oct. 14, Hamas released a video displaying a bunch of fighters coming out of tunnels and staging a mock assault on Israeli tanks. To music that might have been a part of a “Call of Duty” soundtrack, the fighters then haul away fake Israeli prisoners extracted from the tanks and dump them, head first, into the tunnels, earlier than slipping again into the underground passageways themselves.
“This is what awaits you when you enter Gaza,” the video says on the finish.
Daphne Richemond-Barak, a tunnel warfare knowledgeable at Reichman University in Israel, stated she doubted anybody is aware of what number of miles of tunnels Hamas has. Some analysts have put the quantity within the lots of. The group’s chief in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, stated in 2021 that there have been 310 miles of tunnels in Gaza.
In 2018, the Israel Defense Forces destroyed a tunnel that was greater than a mile lengthy.
Some of the tunnels have been constructed with mechanical digging gear, however the tunnels that Hamas is believed to make use of as a launchpad for assaults on Israel are dug by hand or with shovels, officers say, to keep away from detection. The sandy terrain makes it simpler to carve out the tunnels.
Typically, the tunnels that Hamas fighters transfer by way of are round six and a half ft tall and three ft huge, specialists stated. The slim width generally is a nightmare for troopers who’ve to maneuver single file by way of them.
“For defensive purposes, it is an operational challenge for the I.D.F.,” Ms. Richemond-Barak stated.
Soldiers and officers who’ve labored on clearing tunnels in Gaza up to now say that militaries often chorus from sending individuals into them. “Hamas has prepared its tunnels,” Ms. Richemond-Barak stated. “They’re probably booby-trapped.”
There is not any “probably” concerning the booby traps, stated Col. Amir Olo, the previous commander of the elite fight engineering unit often known as Yahalom, which is in control of dismantling tunnels. Col. Olo was a part of an Israeli effort in 2014, known as Protective Edge, with a said goal of destroying Gaza’s tunnel system throughout a two-week floor invasion.
Booby traps — often bombs which might be both remotely triggered or explode when one thing crosses a tripwire — are ever current, he stated. In 2013, six Israeli soldiers were wounded, and one was blinded, when a booby lure exploded as they tried to shove a digicam right into a Hamas tunnel.
Soldiers who’ve cleared tunnels say that going into one is the very last thing they wish to do. “By using the tunnels, the enemy can surround and attack us from behind,” Col. Olo stated in an interview.
Ben Milch, an Israeli American who cleared tunnels with the Israeli navy throughout the 2014 Gaza War, stated his unit got here beneath hearth repeatedly whereas working to destroy some 13 tunnels.
At first, Mr. Milch stated, he and different troopers had been uncertain the place to search for entrances, which had been usually in densely populated areas close to mosques and homes. But then, the troops started to identify telltale indicators, like pulley programs subsequent to buildings.
Airstrikes and remote-powered sensors can destroy tunnels, however ultimately Israel must ship in individuals if they need assurance {that a} community has been totally dismantled, navy officers stated.
“Countering tunneling tactics require ground forces,” in accordance with a RAND Corporation report on the 2014 Gaza War. “Even after the conclusion of Protective Edge, the I.D.F. faced real technological challenges with detecting, fighting in and ultimately destroying tunnels.”
An Israeli navy unit known as Samur, or weasel, focuses on underground warfare, coaching on mock tunnels in Israel.
An Israeli reservist soldier within the West Bank stated that different infantry items additionally practice in tunnel warfare.
He described one method, known as “purple hair,” used to find the tentacles of a tunnel. Israeli troops drop smoke grenades right into a tunnel, after which look ahead to purple smoke to return out of any homes within the space. The smoke, the soldier stated, indicators {that a} home is linked to the tunnel community and should be sealed off earlier than troopers descend into the tunnels. The smoke strikes like strands of hair all through the tunnel system, he stated.
But the ocean tunnels characterize a harmful future pattern, Ms. Richemond-Barak stated.
In 2018, Israel destroyed one that extended meters into the sea, maybe the primary of that sort found. Hamas divers may have used the tunnel to cross into Israeli waters undetected.
After the Israeli navy introduced on Tuesday that it had destroyed the tunnel to the ocean, it launched a video of one other incident. Officials stated it confirmed Israeli forces bombing Hamas divers who had exited a tunnel alongside the coast of Gaza and had been attempting to enter Israel close to Zikim Beach.
“Hamas is continuously innovating in the realm of subterranean warfare and exploiting its knowledge and know-how in new, novel ways,” Ms. Richemond-Barak stated.
Jeffrey Gettleman and Gal Koplewitz contributed reporting from Jerusalem.
