The Hamas tunnel city beneath Gaza - a hidden frontline for Israel
A Palestinian youth crawls in a tunnel during a graduation ceremony for a training camp run by the Hamas movement on 29 January 2015 in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip.The Hamas tunnel network in Gaza is described as extensive, stretching for hundreds of kilometres and reaching depths of up to 80 meters.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin noted that Iraq's nine-month-long battle to retake the city of Mosul from Islamic State might prove to have been easier than what awaits the Israelis - likely to be"a lot of IEDs , a lot of booby traps, and just a really grinding activity". While it and other Palestinian groups are secretive about their networks, recently released Israeli hostage, 85-year-old Yocheved Lifshitz, said:"It looked like a spider's web, many, many tunnels," adding:"We walked kilometres under the ground."
"Although we have been attacking massively for days and days, the leadership is pretty much intact, as is the ability to command and control, the ability even to try and launch counter attacks," said Amir Avivi, a former brigadier general whose senior positions in the Israeli military included deputy commander of the Gaza division, tasked with tackling tunnels.
A small number of narrower, deep, smuggling tunnels were still operating until recently between Egypt and Gaza, according to two security sources and a trader in the Egyptian city of El Arish, but they had slowed to a near-halt since the Israel-Hamas war started. Shortly afterwards Hamas's military wing, the Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades, captured Gilad Shalit and killed two other Israeli soldiers after burrowing 600 metres to raid the Kerem Shalom base on the Gaza border.
One Rafah tunnel operator, Abu Qusay, said a half-mile tunnel took three to six months to dig and could yield profits of up to $100,000 a day. The most profitable item was bullets, bought for $1 each in Egypt and fetching more than $6 in Gaza. Kalashnikov rifles, he said, cost $800 in Egypt and sold for twice that.
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