As Israel readies Gaza invasion, can it get past Hamas’ secret tunnel network?
- Targeting the underground maze will not be easy because of the group’s greater knowledge of the passageways, where it is holding Israeli hostages
- Past attempts by the Israeli army to enter the tunnels and get rid of them have been largely unsuccessful
Though Hamas is no match for the technological sophistication of the Israeli army, the militant group has one very unusual asset: a vast network of secret subterranean tunnels.
Since Israel began to grasp the full extent of the labyrinth in 2014, it has spent over US$1 billion developing an underground barrier along its 60km border with the Gaza Strip, and hundreds of millions of dollars more on a system to detect the construction of new tunnels – measures it has dubbed the “Iron Wall” and “Iron Spade”.
These defences were meant to make its territory unimpregnable. But in at least one case, the hidden passageways were used to abet the cross-border attacks which last week killed 1,200 people, supplementing incursions by air, land and sea.
Now, as Israel signals an imminent ground invasion of Gaza, the same network is complicating its military retaliation – not least because Hamas says it is holding Israeli hostages in subterranean rooms.
“Think of the Gaza Strip as one layer for civilians and then another layer for Hamas,” said Jonathan Conricus, a spokesman for the Israeli Defence Forces. “We are trying to get to that second layer that Hamas has built.”