The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is beginning to tackle the challenge of Hamas’s underground tunnel network, in which it hides terrorists, weapons, supplies — and hostages.
There are hundreds of miles of Hamas tunnels underneath Gaza, often built with supplies that were supposed to be used for civilian construction and humanitarian aid. Some tunnels were built through the use of child slave labor, leading to the deaths of Palestinian children. And, as critics have noted, none of the tunnels offer bomb shelters for Palestinian civilians — only terrorists.
The tunnels have already been a challenge for the IDF as it penetrates deeper into Gaza. Overnight, dozens of Hamas terrorists emerged from tunnels to attack Israeli soldiers, who were able to repel the attack without casualties, but only after an intense fight.
The effort to close, collapse, clear out, and eliminate the tunnels will likely define the next stage of the war in Gaza. And it could take months.
The Times of Israel reported Thursday, citing the Walla news website:
The combat engineers are using various types of robots and explosive devices to destroy the tunnels, detonate any booby traps installed by Hamas, and kill terrorists, the report says.
“Maybe at first they were able to harass us, sting us by firing from tunnel exits, but after we established control of the areas, the engineering operation started,” a senior officer in the Southern Command tells Walla.
“We are going to collapse the entrances and the tunnels on them. It will become a death zone. They made a mistake, they chose to be in a place they cannot escape from. They will die in the tunnels,” he said.
John Spencer of the Modern War Institute at West Point recently described the difficulty facing the IDF as it tackles the tunnels:
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are very aware of the presence of Hamas tunnels in Gaza. They often refer to the group’s tunnel systems as the “metro.” The destruction of these tunnel complexes was one of the objectives of previous ground campaigns into Gaza, in 2008 and 2014. In total, there were believed to be over three hundred miles of tunnels in 2021, when Israel claimed to have destroyed sixty miles of tunnels during an eleven-day bombing campaign. Even if those tunnels have not been rebuilt or replaced, that means that it is likely that there remain hundreds of miles of intricate, complex, and deep tunnel infrastructure in Gaza. It is a veritable city underneath the cities on Gaza’s surface.
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The IDF has the capability to find, recover hostages from, clear, neutralize, and destroy tunnels. There are specialized units like the IDF Combat Engineering Corps’s Yahalom Unit, an elite commando unit whose soldiers specializes in finding, clearing, and destroying tunnels. The large force includes subordinate units like Sayfan, which trains to handle the threat of unconventional weapons, Samur, which specializes in entering, clearing, and destroying tunnels. The Yahalom is one of the largest units in the world that trains, mans, equips, experiments, and develops new ways to deal with underground warfare. The IDF’s canine unit, Oketz, has dogs trained for operating underground. And the IDF, police, and intelligence services all have special units—like Sayeret Matkal, the Yamam, and others—who share best practices for dealing with terrorists and combatants underground.
The Yahalom and other IDF units also have special equipment specifically developed for tunnels. Tunnel reconnaissance units, for example, use ground and aerial sensors, ground-penetrating radar, drilling equipment, and other systems to find tunnels. There are radios and navigation technologies that to work underground, night-vision goggles that use thermal and other technologies to see in complete darkness, and a suite of remote or wire-controlled flying or crawling robots that can look into and map tunnels without risking soldiers. The IDF also uses virtual reality training simulators that allow soldiers to train for underground warfare even when they aren’t at the physical training sites that include subterranean environments.
Israel can also use airstrikes to destroy tunnels with ground-penetrating bombs. However, it also wants to avoid killing hostages.
The Yahalom (“Diamond”) unit, referred to above, is a key part of Israel’s tunnel-busting operation. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the unit last week, calling it the “vanguard” of the Israeli attack on Hamas and praising its readiness for battle.
Walla reports that Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, visited the Yahalom unit on Thursday to offer encouragement.
He said (translated from Hebrew):
I have seen what the unit has done until now, first of all in the fighting on October 7, when a lot of regular and reserve forces arrived, attacked, killed terrorists and acted as combatants on land. I look at the unique capabilities of the Corps of Engineers, we have unique solutions to reach all the tunnels and dismantle them below the surface of the ground, we are ready to do it. You will be the tip of the spear in all the most important points, in forces, units, brigades.
Israel is refusing to allow fuel into Gaza, noting that Hamas hoards fuel in its tunnels and is stealing fuel from hospitals rather than allowing civilians to access fuel that they need for transportation, electricity, heating, and cooking.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.