Wednesday 6 December 2023

Israel has to resolve what to do about the tunnels under Gaza

It has already been eight weeks since the Israel Defence Forces blasted into northern Gaza to start attacking Hamas. Now that the main thrust of their military operation is in southern Gaza, the IDF seems to be accelerating its offensive, with soldiers mounting door-to-door fighting in an attempt to sweep up the majority of Hamas fighters. But at some point the IDF will have to decide what to do about the tunnels and the underground bunkers.In the north they poured concrete into hundreds of tunnel shafts to block them up. But that didn't per se kill Hamas members hiding in the tunnels. They will have just moved further down the network of tunnels. Now the Israelis are talking about flooding all the tunnels with sea water, pumped in from the Mediterranean Sea. But there are two things stopping them from taking this drastic action. First of course are the hostages. The 130 or so left in Hamas hands will be in the deepest and most impenetrable bunkers. Netanhyahu cannot under any circumstances decide to sacrifice the lives of the hostages in order to eliminate all the Hamas fighters down in the tunnels. The second thing stopping the flooding option is the potential damage it would cause to the foundations of every building left standing in Gaza. While tunnels collapsed under the weight of the sea water, the ground structure could be severely affected across the Gaza Strip. So if flooding the tunnels has to be put off for now, is the only other option for IDF troops to storm the tunnels and follow them wherever they go. It's reported that many of the tunnels have been boobytrapped, so a full-scale assault down under Gaza would seem to be far too dangerous. It's a Catch-22 situation which currently is in favour of Hamas.

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