Will the Israeli army be able to win its war against Hamas without massively investing in the tunnels dug by the Islamist movement under the Gaza Strip? The question has haunted the general staff of the Jewish state since the launch of its land operation in the Palestinian enclave on October 26, 2023. “Half of the territory of North Gaza has been destroyed by Israeli bombings, but the network of tunnels remains intact for the moment”worries a French military source.
Until now, the Israeli army estimated the extent of the device built under Gaza at around 400 kilometers. But its first underground forays showed that this figure was underestimated and that the network of galleries could be twice as large, the equivalent of almost four times the Paris metro. “The scale of Hamas’ clandestine networks could, once fully exposed, exceed anything a modern army has ever faced”estimates John Spencer, head of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute, in a note published on January 18.
Supplied with water and electricity, served by mechanical or natural ventilation, this labyrinth of bunkers and tunnels serves as a refuge for Hamas men, but also houses command posts, ammunition stocks, weapons workshops… 136 hostages still in the hands of the Islamist movement (31 were declared dead by the Jewish state) are also being held there. Above all, this network poses a permanent threat to the rear of the Israeli army, which can never be sure that Palestinian fighters will not emerge from the ground in the territories it has just conquered.
Since the launch of its “Iron Sword” operation, Israel has used penetrating bombs, including GBU-28s supplied by the United States, to reach tunnels and access shafts to the Palestinian network. But these would be largely ineffective. “Destroying a concrete and iron shelter located beyond 20 meters deep is almost impossible from the outside”says a French engineering officer, recalling that“no buried Serbian CP was destroyed during the war in former Yugoslavia”. According to the Israeli army, some Hamas underground passages are located up to 70 or 80 meters deep.
“Entrapment is omnipresent”
To dislodge Palestinian fighters from the “Gaza metro”, as this underground maze is nicknamed, various experts recommend flooding the galleries. The Israeli army indicated on January 30 that it had started sending “large volumes of water” in the tunnels located in the south of the enclave. But the extent of the network is such that the Western military doubts the effectiveness of such a device. Not to mention the risk of contamination of the region’s rare groundwater if sea water were to be used.
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