The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) released footage Friday of a network of Hamas terror tunnels that it found under the Blue Beach Hotel, a luxury resort for Gaza’s elite.
In a statement, the IDF said:
The 162nd Division’s 14th Brigade, in cooperation with the Yahalom Special Engineering Unit, operated on a Hamas infrastructure with seven tunnels shafts and inside them terrorist quarters. The infrastructure is located at the Blue Beach Hotel in the northern Gaza Strip by the beach. Yahalom Unit forces identified the tunnels’ routes using a range of methods and destroyed the infrastructure this week.
Hamas terrorists exploited the hotel as a shelter from where they planned and executed attacks both above and below ground. Many weapons were found under the hotel, including AK-47 assault rifles, explosives, and drones. During the course of combat, dozens of Hamas terrorists entrenched in the hotel fired anti-tank missiles at IDF forces, who returned fire. During the forces’ operations in the hotel area, the soldiers encountered and eliminated terrorists
Over the past few months, reservists of the 14th Battalion operated in northern Gaza Strip in three locations: north of Jabalya, Beit Hanoun, and Gaza City. During the course of combat, the soldiers destroyed weapon stockpiles, missile launch sites, and underground command centers used by Hamas.
The Blue Beach Hotel belies the description, common in Palestinian propaganda, of Gaza as an “open-air prison.”
In this Thursday, July 30, 2015 photo, Palestinian family members enjoy themselves at a swimming pool of the Blue Beach Resort in Gaza City. (AP Photo/Adel Hana)
The Arab Weekly described the 163-room resort in 2015: “The resort was built on 15,000 square metres of land and includes a hotel, 152 chalets, recreation facilities, a children’s amusement park, a bowling lounge, arcades shop and two swimming pools, all surrounded by greenery and palm trees. Coffee shops and restaurants are scattered along the way from the main hotel building to the swimming pools.”
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 2021 e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now updated with a new foreword. 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.