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Gaza's Tunnel Wars

(Times of Israel) Avi Issacharoff - One of the most important stories of the fighting has been Hamas' defensive tunnels, into which they invested tens of millions of dollars, spreading across much of Gaza. Soldiers speak of an extensive network of tunnels, bunkers and caches, which allow Hamas to fight with minimal exposure themselves. The Hamas operatives move from one tunnel to another, emerging each time from a different hole, fire, then disappear again. One officer told me about a network of defensive tunnels the IDF faced in Hiz'aa, in southern Gaza. Hamas dug three tunnels along three streets, with numerous entrances and exits. "Every time they fired at us from a different place. Small squads of two or three people. We decided to put smoke into one of the shafts, and suddenly saw smoke rising from dozens of places along these three streets." One can assume that, in the eight years since the Second Lebanon War, Hizbullah has accelerated its digging project on defensive tunnels within Lebanon and attack tunnels into Israel. Eight years of work can mean that, in the next war, we will find Hizbullah fighters emerging from tunnels deep inside Israel.
2014-08-01 00:00:00
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