There is a transportation network below Gaza, one that Israel is trying to destroy.
The network is made up of tunnels, where most Hamas fighters are likely living alongside stockpiles of weapons, food, water and, now, more than 200 Israeli hostages. Parts of the tunnels are large enough for vehicles to drive in them.
The Israeli military first launched an intense air attack targeting these tunnels and has now sent in ground troops to destroy them. Eliminating the tunnels would go long way toward breaking Hamas’s control over Gaza.
In today’s newsletter, we’ll explain why the tunnel network is so important — and why Israel will not have an easy time dismantling it.
‘The metro’
Tunnels have existed under Gaza for years. But after Israel withdrew its forces and settlers from Gaza nearly two decades ago, Hamas vastly expanded the underground network. Hamas has a long history of terrorist violence — both the U.S. and the European Union consider it a terrorist group — and the tunnels allow its members to hide from Israeli air attacks.
Israel created further incentive for tunnel construction by tightening the blockade of Gaza after 2007. The main rationale for the blockade was to keep out weapons and related material, but Israel’s definition is so broad that the blockade also restricted the flow of basic items. In response, Gazans have used the tunnels — which extend south into Egypt — to smuggle in food, goods, people and weapons. Some people refer to the hundreds of miles of tunnels as “the metro.”
(This story, by our colleagues Adam Goldman, Helene Cooper and Justin Scheck, has more details.)
Egypt’s government has also viewed the tunnels as a security threat. A decade ago, Egypt tried to destroy some tunnels along its border with Gaza, by dumping sewage into them and leveling houses that concealed entrances, as Joel Roskin, a geology professor at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, told our colleagues.
In the current war, Hamas will use the tunnels to hide and to attack Israeli soldiers from unexpected places. “By using the tunnels, the enemy can surround and attack us from behind,” said Col. Amir Olo, the former commander of the elite Israeli engineering unit in charge of dismantling tunnels.
The civilian toll
The battle over the tunnels is a major reason that this war already has a high civilian death toll. More than two million people live above the tunnels — a layer of human life between many Hamas targets and Israeli missiles.
Hamas has hidden many weapons under hospitals, schools and mosques so that Israel risks killing civilians, and facing an international backlash, when it fights. Hamas fighters also slip above and below ground, blending with civilians.
These practices mean that Hamas is responsible for many of the civilian deaths, according to international law, as David French, a Times Opinion writer and former military lawyer, has explained. Deliberately putting military resources near civilians and disguising fighters as civilians are both violations of the laws of war.
António Guterres, the secretary general of the United Nations, has said Israel is also violating international law by continuing to bomb southern Gaza — partly to destroy tunnels — after first ordering people to evacuate there for safety.
While Israel says its strikes are precise, Palestinians say that the bombing has felt vengeful and unfocused. One man lost 45 members of his extended family, including a month-old boy. Overall, Hamas says, at least 8,000 people have died in the war, and the U.N. has confirmed the deaths of at least 2,360 children.
One issue is that bombs that hit tunnels can still kill civilians through a kind of aftershock. When bombs explode underground, buildings above can collapse into a crater. “The craters become mass graves,” said Eyal Weizman, the director of Forensic Architecture, a research group.
Whatever the appropriate mix of blame between Israel and Hamas, the human toll has led to widespread criticism of Israel. And as its ground incursions continue, the toll will surely grow. The more than 200 hostages held by Hamas, likely in the tunnels, will also be at risk.
Air, then ground
The first stage of Israel’s campaign against the tunnels has been its air war. The military has launched more than 7,000 airstrikes on Gaza since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that killed more than 1,400 Israelis. That air war continues, along with the ground operation.
Israel has dropped special bombs that don’t explode until after they have burrowed into the ground. Another type of weapon, called “sponge bombs,” creates an explosion of hardening foam to seal off tunnels. If tunnel entrances are sealed, fighters can’t pop out of them in surprise attacks.
The ground operation allows Israel to take additional steps to demolish tunnels. An Israeli reservist soldier described one technique, called “purple hair,” to our colleagues:
Israeli troops drop smoke grenades into a tunnel, and then watch for purple smoke to come out of any houses in the area. The smoke, the soldier said, signals that a house is connected to the tunnel network and must be sealed off before soldiers descend into the tunnels. The smoke moves like strands of hair throughout the tunnel system, he said.
This description helps make clear why urban warfare tends to be so deadly. “It will be bloody, brutal fighting,” said Gen. Joseph L. Votel, the former leader of U.S. military operations in the Middle East.
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