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Some news agencies quoted military experts that the network of tunnels built by the Islamic Resistance Movement (agitation) in Gaza strip It may pose the most serious challenges to the Israeli army if it invades the Gaza Strip by land.
Some estimates also indicate that Hamas’s tunnel network is the largest in the world after the network of underground facilities built by North Korea.
The newspaper “Maariv” published a report in this regard under the title “Underground hell, and the enormous challenge for the Israeli army. This is the number of tunnels in Gaza.”
John Spencer, head of civil war studies at the Modern War Institute at the US Military Academy West Point, says the scale of “the challenge in Gaza with the underground tunnels is unique.”
In an article published a few days ago, Spencer, a former US Army officer, said that the large and complex network of tunnels constitutes an insoluble dilemma and a danger lurking for the Israeli ground forces.
Estimates
Some estimates indicate that the Gaza tunnel network includes 1,300 tunnels, with a length of about 500 kilometers, and that some of them are 70 meters deep below the surface of the earth.
According to some reports, most of these tunnels are only two meters high, while most of them are also two meters wide.
Some experts believe that Hamas is keeping those it captured in the attack it launched against the Israeli occupation on October 7, in those tunnels, which are also likely used to store weapons, food, water, and fuel.
Researchers who conducted previous investigations into the Hamas tunnel network believe that some of the movement’s leaders are taking shelter inside those tunnels.
Complexities and multiple fronts
Experts also say that the tunnels will increase the complexity of the war scenario if Israel launches a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, as Spencer believes that they allow the movement’s fighters to move between various combat sites safely and freely.
While Mike Martin, a war expert at King’s College in London, says: “In short, these tunnels create a balance, because they neutralize Israel’s weapons, tactical, technological and organizational advantages, and they also neutralize the danger of the inability to distinguish between military and civilian targets that require examination in accordance with international law.”
He added, “Therefore, the Israeli army faces problems in everything related to military operations within civilian areas, which can be described as three-dimensional combat.”
Mike explains what he means by “three-dimensional combat,” saying, “There will be parties shooting from atop residential towers, and there will also be those shooting from underground.”
He believes that demolishing buildings is not a solution, as demolished buildings turn into barricades used by resistance fighters to attack the occupation army.
He believes that fighting in cities is the most difficult form of fighting that any army can face.
The goal was to break the siege
Reports indicate that the tunnels in Gaza were initially prepared to smuggle goods between Egypt and the besieged Strip, but with the passage of time and due to the increase in Israeli aerial surveillance by drones and advanced electronic spying equipment, Hamas began expanding this network of tunnels.
But the Israeli army did not discover its danger and complications until after the military operation it launched in Gaza in 2014.
Since that time, Israel has begun building underground border barriers along the border with the Gaza Strip in order to prevent infiltration through tunnels into Israeli cities and towns.
Experts say that it is difficult to discover tunnels because they were built under different buildings, but there are different ways to diagnose them, such as using radar and other modern technologies.
