Consider the New York City subway system. Launched in 1904, it carried 1.8 billion passengers last year, over 248 route miles beneath the sprawling city, covering Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. Amazing. It is hard to imagine life in the city without its metro.
There is another “metro.” It is the web of tunnels beneath Gaza. Its goal is not to facilitate life but to bring death. And it is at long last seen by Israel as an existential strategic threat that must be destroyed. To do so will take creative thinking and a massive ground invasion, facing huge difficulties.
How large is the Gaza ‘metro’?
Truly staggering. The tunnels stretch for miles beneath the length and breadth of Gaza. An IDF website notes that since January 2014, some 4,680 trucks carrying 181,000 tons of gravel, iron, cement, wood, and other materials passed through the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza – from Israel. Yes, we Israelis were fully complicit in this.
Bar-Ilan University geology professor Joel Roskin has published books and articles on tunnels and used his expertise in his IDF service. He told Jerusalem Post reporter Judy Siegel-Itzkovich that Hamas tunnels have been a project under construction for many years. “It began with the smuggling of goods [mainly to and from Egypt], progressed to the smuggling of weapons, and later evolved into attack tunnels,” he said.
Siegel-Itzkovich observes that “in recent years, Hamas integrated the underground system in many ways into its defensive and offensive system, built by cruelly combining military warfare, guerrilla warfare, and terrorism.”
All this, right under our noses.
How costly is the Gaza metro?
According to Prof. Roskin, tunnels may be as deep as 60 meters (180 feet, the height of a 15-story building). Roskin notes that the deeper the tunnel, the denser and harder are the clay sediments, owing to overburden (pressure of the soil above the tunnel), enabling a more sturdy tunnel. Hamas, of course, has taken into account IDF threats from the air in planning tunnel depths.
Roskin, who in the past has advised IDF on geological aspects of the tunnels, observed that IDF estimates state that each stretch of tunnel costs $3 million, using prefabricated concrete and iron. And there are many dozens of them. They have spacious rooms for command and control, hospitals, and even places where Hamas terrorists host their families. They are well ventilated and well lit, with power from generators that use diesel fuel.
Incidentally, Hezbollah has also built attack tunnels, from Lebanon into northern Israel. Before Israel found and destroyed one, it was shown to the world. An American four-star general, Joseph Votel, said he was “taken aback at the level of effort involved in creating those things.” Effort, resources – in a poor nation, Lebanon, struggling to feed its people.
Can the tunnels be destroyed by aerial bombardment?
Only in theory. The US has some fearful weapons, including a 15-ton bomb, the GBU-57. But they haven’t offered them to Israel. And in a tiny area three times more densely populated than Los Angeles, only 25 miles long and six miles wide, the civilian toll would be immense and unacceptable. Aerial bombs alone cannot do the trick.
How did Egypt try to destroy the smuggling tunnels leading into Sinai?
A vast system of tunnels was built from Gaza, leading south into Egypt’s Sinai, for purposes of smuggling weapons and people. According to Roskin, the tunnel exits in Sinai were built under houses and other structures order to hide them. Egypt at one point pumped sewage and seawater into these tunnels, igniting a huge Palestinian protest.
So, how can the IDF effectively neutralize the tunnels?
Writing in the daily USA Today, Rick Jarvis describes in detail IDF anti-tunnel efforts. An IDF unit called Samur (“weasel” in Hebrew) is trained to squeeze through narrow tunnels, find lodging and headquarters, and stores of weapons, knowing booby-traps are everywhere. They are also trained to find hostages – some 240 of them remain after the October 7 attack.
Great expense has been incurred in preparing technologies and methods to destroy the tunnels. Jarvis notes that the US Congress has allocated $320m. since 2016 to assist in this. The IDF has invested much more.
Can Gazan civilians shelter in the tunnels?
Hamas does not allow it. Not only does Hamas build command bunkers in tunnels under schools and hospitals, but it bans civilians from using them for shelter. Let’s run some numbers. Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who spent years in Israeli prison and was released in a hostage exchange, bragged in 2021 that there are 300 miles of tunnels under Gaza – fully the length of the New York City subway system. This is an exaggeration. But suppose there are, say, 100 miles of tunnels. I estimate that a mile of tunnel, 5,280 feet, could shelter 2,600 people, giving each two feet of space to sit or stand. One hundred miles of tunnel, notwithstanding the huge halls built for hostages and command centers, could shelter 260,000 Gazans – enough to house, say, over half of Gazan children 12 and under. Gaza has a million children and youths 18 and under.
Hamas murdered many of our Israeli children and hold others hostage. They are also directly culpable for many of the collateral deaths of their own. But none of their supporters seem willing to recognize this.
Are the hostages being held in the tunnels?
On Monday, October 23, hostage Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, from Kibbutz Nir Oz, was freed. She was taken by motorbike to Gaza by Hamas terrorists. She said she was beaten initially, though later given medicine and fed by her captors. She reported that the hostages are held in a “spider’s web” of tunnels that stretch far beneath Gaza and was forced to walk for miles through them.
How does Hamas provide power for the tunnels?
Tunnels have to be well ventilated, lit, and equipped for communications. This is done through generators powered by diesel fuel. That is why Hamas is so desperate to obtain fuel, thus far disallowed by Israel in the humanitarian aid trucks.
IDF Spokesperson Daniel Hagari estimates that Hamas has at least half a million liters of fuel underground. “Hamas is stealing from Gazan civilians to fuel its attacks,” he noted. The UN aid agency UNRWA has confirmed theft of diesel fuel by Hamas from hospitals.
A 100-kilowatt generator uses 7.4 gallons of diesel (28 liters) per hour, or 672 liters per 24 hours, 4,700 liters per week. This suggests that Hamas has enough diesel fuel to power 100 generators for a week.
IN HIS 2017 book Not in God’s Name, the late UK Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks asserted that when individuals are motivated by what he calls “altruistic evil” in the name of their God, terrible violence ensues.
A quarter of the world’s eight billion people are Muslims. Based on global pro-Hamas demonstrations, it appears that many or most have embraced a religious war against Israel.
There are 16 million Jews in the world, nearly half of whom live in Israel. A very large majority rejects the notion of a religious war.
Israel has been battling Hamas, an Islamic offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, since it took over Gaza in 2007, and even well before. In between wars, Thomas Friedman notes, “Israel built an impressive society and economy…. Hamas took nearly all of its resources and built attack tunnels.”
We will destroy the tunnels that threaten us, though it will be hard and costly.
And one day, sanity will return and peace among peoples will prevail. ■
The writer heads the Zvi Griliches Research Data Center at S. Neaman Institute, Technion and blogs at www.timnovate.wordpress.com.