The tunnels inside Gaza and under the Israeli border are not a secret project Hamas ran under the noses of Israel and the Palestinian public. Everyone in Gaza, knew that beneath Gaza, the City and all of its environs, a network of tunnels was being dug over the past five years, with an investment of tens of millions of dollars.
Hamas Tunnels Used To Target Israel’s Kindergartens
By Mordechai Ben-Menachem
Multiple media outlets report that Hamas’s offensive tunnel
network – now known to have been composed of over forty attack tunnels dug
underneath Israel’s border with the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip – was set to be
activated during the Jewish High Holidays (September 24th) as a mass
terror attack.
The attack was meant to generate as many as ten thousand
casualties, men, women and particularly children and hundreds of
captives. Explosives were particularly placed underneath kindergartens to
make certain that these “institutions” would be the first struck, even before
any thing else.
The IDF recently published the below map showing that tunnels were
created in pairs, to empty out on both sides of nearby communities. The
known cost of the infrastructure – each tunnel costs upward of some $1 million
– clearly shows that Hamas was planning a coordinated mega-attack. It must
be understood that use of even one tunnel would inevitably trigger Israeli
retaliation against the entire network.
A map of a small portion of the tunnels meant to be used 9 weeks
from now.
Revelations regarding the planned tunnel attack magnitude played a
decisive role in the Israeli government’s rejection of a ceasefire proposed
late Friday by Secretary of State John Kerry.
Unbelievably,
Kerry actually proposed in his latest “cease-fire proposal” – none of which
have been honored by Hamas so far – that Israel refrains from
degrading remaining attack tunnels. This mind-boggling concept would
necessarily be rejected by any sane government, of any country.
Israeli security sources, citing information acquired in
interrogations of captured brigands, described a scenario under which hundreds
of heavily armed Hamas fighters would have spilled out into Israel in the dead
of night and within 10 minutes been positioned to infiltrate essentially all
Israeli communities surrounding the Gaza Strip. Waiting then in hiding until
schools and kindergartens were occupied, the terrorists would then attempt to
kill the children first, and then kill and kidnap as many Israelis as
possible. The plot was set to take place during Jewish New Year, on
September 24.
“It’s like the Underground, the Metro or the Subway,” Israeli
military spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner said. “These tunnels are all
connected. I would describe it as Lower Gaza.”
Israeli Economy Minister Naftali Bennett said, “A whole city of
terror tunnels has been found. Without the ground operation, we would
have woken up one day to an Israeli 9/11.”
Except, the actual objective was to be five times 9/11.
This picture shows clearly the width of one of the tunnels,
sufficient for wheeled vehicles to transverse it. Hamas did not build a
“subway” system for Gaza residents. They built an infrastructure
for one purpose, and one only, an industry of death.
Israeli military officials reported that the tunnels are stocked
with tranquilizers, handcuffs, syringes, ropes and other materials used for
subduing abductees, civilians and soldiers. The tunnels also had
fantastic quantities of explosives and additional military materiel meant to be
used in the up-coming mega attack. Much of these explosives had already
been placed underneath Israeli kindergartens. Some of these tunnels were
as deep as 30 meters underground.
Fantastic quantities of explosives were stored in every tunnel,
meant to be used in a mega-attack on civilian communities and infrastructure.
Sources say the Gaza Strip war, Operation Protective Edge, could
serve as a prelude for a more extensive underground war with the
Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah. Perhaps, not ‘just’ in
the Middle East.
The tunnels inside Gaza and under the Israeli border are
not a secret project Hamas ran under the noses of Israel and the
Palestinian public. Everyone in Gaza, knew that beneath Gaza, the City and
all of its environs, a network of tunnels was being dug over the past five
years, with an investment of tens of millions of dollars. Yet no one
in Israel, public or military, was prepared for the scope of the tunnels –
the danger that became clear in the past week or two.
Senior Hamas operatives show off their offensive tunnels to their
spouses. Unbelievably, this is actually a picture of a Marriage taking
place in the ‘place of death’.
In order to create this monstrosity, Hamas needed significant
professional help; and this help had to have come from a large organization or
state entity. This is not just the monetary aid it received from Qatar, America’s
ally. This is professional guidance for the performance of such an
underground feat. Perhaps Hamas could have used experts from the tunnels
dug at Rafah under the Gaza-Egypt border, but those were significantly simpler,
and did not demand any extraordinary investment or effort.
A Hamas operative climbing upward in a pier of one of the major
tunnels. Notice the work on the sides of the tunnel.
Who supplied these quantities of material? Who planned what
would be needed? How did Hamas acquire thousands of ampoules of
tranquilizer, syringes and other, additional drugs to be used? These are
far beyond the quantities and variety of what is needed by any civilian medical
service.
How was all this brought in to the Gaza Strip? The logistics
of this planned attack are the work of a well-organised military, not that of a
militia or club. This was no amateur plan.
Observers note that attack scenarios lined up with recently
revealed data about the sophistication, scope and nature of the offensive
tunnel network. As previously reported here, this sophistication and know-how
is being copied right now by Mexico-based Hezbollah agents along
the Southern US border. Tunnels in Southern Lebanon, as
in South US, are significantly more difficult to detect than those in the
sandy terrain of the Gaza Strip.
“Hamas planned these tunnels for years, and planned to use them to
kidnap soldiers,” Israeli military spokesman Brig. Gen. Mordechai Almoz said.
“[Now] they see the tunnels collapsing one after the other.” For the last
two years, the Israeli army has sought to develop skills and equipment to fight
in enemy tunnels and bunkers. Hamas and Islamic Jihad have used tunnels
to operate command and control, to infiltrate Israel and abduct
soldiers, to fire rockets and to conceal fighters amid invasion of the Gaza
Strip.