Israel fails to destroy Hamas tunnels: Report

News Desk - The Cradle

Israel continues to target its own soldiers and civilians held captive in Gaza's sprawling tunnel system to rid itself of war constraints

Israel has destroyed only 20 percent of Hamas tunnels in Gaza since the beginning of the war with Hamas and the Palestinian resistance that began almost four months ago, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on 28 January.

According to US and Israeli officials, "80% of Hamas's vast warren of tunnels under Gaza remains intact after weeks of Israeli efforts to destroy them … hampering Israel's central war aims."

The roughly 500 km of tunnels under Gaza give Hamas places to securely store weapons and ammunition, hide and transport its fighters, hold Israeli captives, and operate command-and-control centers for its leadership.

Israel has tried to destroy the tunnels in several ways, including hitting them with airstrikes and liquid explosives, searching them with dogs and robots, destroying their entrances, and raiding them with elite soldiers.

Israel has used the tunnels as a pretext to destroy civilian infrastructure in Gaza, including entire residential areas, using 2,000 lb bunker-buster bombs supplied by the US.

The WSJ added, "And Israel has said it has conducted strikes on hospitals and other key infrastructure in its pursuit of the tunnels."

Israel also installed a series of pumps to flood the tunnels with water from the Mediterranean Sea and Israel.  

But efforts to destroy the tunnels have nevertheless been ineffective, US officials told the WSJ.

Israeli officials moved ahead with plans to flood the tunnels in December despite fears this would kill some of the captives taken by fighters from Hamas' armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, on 7 October during Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.

In a meeting with Israel's war cabinet, released captives and family members of captives angrily told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu they feared that flooding the tunnels, where many of the captives are presumably being held, would kill their loved ones.

One released Israeli captive, whose husband remained in Gaza, told the prime minister: "The feeling we had there was that no one was doing anything for us. The fact is that I was in a hiding place that was shelled, and we had to be smuggled out and wounded. Not including the helicopter that shot at us on the way to Gaza. You claim that there is intelligence, But the fact is that we are being shelled. My husband was separated from us three days before we returned to Israel and taken to the tunnels. And you are talking about flooding the tunnels with seawater? You are shelling the route of tunnels in the exact area where they are."

Others have accused the Israeli government of attempting to kill their captive family members deliberately.

According to Maya Sherman, her son Ron was killed by the Israeli army, which flooded the tunnel he was being held captive in with poison gas, suffocating him to death.

"Ron was indeed murdered. Not by Hamas. Think more in the direction of Auschwitz and the showers but without Nazis and without Hamas as the cause. No accidental shooting, no report, premeditated murder, bombings with poisonous gases," she wrote on social media.

Israel has adopted a controversial military policy, the Hannibal Directive, which states it is better to kill its own soldiers or civilians who have been taken captive by an enemy rather than have to negotiate and give concessions to win their release, such as releasing Palestinians held captive in Israeli prisons.

A report from Al-Estiklal Newspaper from October detailed how Israel has implanted GPS chips under the skin of its soldiers to facilitate locating them in case of abduction by Hamas or other Palestinian resistance groups.

According to Ayman Rigib, a political science professor at the University of Jerusalem, Hamas discovered these chips under the skin of the soldiers it captured and took to Gaza on 7 October.

The resistance removed these electronic chips, which were implanted under the skin of the Israeli soldiers' hands, and placed all the chips in one location to set up an ambush for Israeli troops that may come to save their comrades.

However, rather than send troops to rescue the captive soldiers, the Israeli army bombed the location as if intending to kill the soldiers.

With the captive soldiers dead and out of the way, this would make it easier for Israel to continue the military operation to destroy Hamas and make Gaza uninhabitable for Palestinians.

Evidence continues to emerge that Israel killed many of the roughly 1,200 Israeli soldiers and civilians killed on 7 October during the Hamas attack on military bases and settlements surrounding Gaza, including with the use of tank and helicopter fire, per the Hannibal Directive.