According to an Israeli intelligence legend, to know where the entrance to the Hamas tunnels is located, just look at the place where the mobile phone signal of people who are being monitored by electronic systems disappears. The ‘Gaza metro’, the name of the 500 kilometer network of underground cavities dug by Palestinian jihadists, is now the number one target of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). They know that if they destroy these safe havens, Hamas and its allies will lose their main stronghold in the Strip.
To find out what these tunnels look like inside, some images are now being recovered that in recent years the terrorists themselves have disseminated to show their power and challenge Israel. Since Tuesday, for example, a video from Russia Today – the Kremlin’s propaganda organ, banned in Europe for its dissemination of false news about the war in Ukraine – has resurfaced, detailing life under land of Islamic Jihad militants. In this footage from 2021, a journalist is seen entering the ‘Gaza metro’ through a vertical shaft. The reporter meets with several commanders, who show him the weapons depots and are proud of being able to spend “days and months, if necessary” in the artificial cave.
Offensive tunnels
The tunnels that can be seen are made of cement and have a semicircular arch coverage. Electrical conduits appear on the walls that allow lighting to be maintained inside. The journalist walks through the bowels and crosses some sections that are decorated with what look like portraits of dead jihadists – the martyrs. He also meets with terrorists armed with AK-47s and RPG grenade launchers, both of which are Russian-made. The protagonists of the video are members of the Al Quds brigade, the armed branch of Islamic Jihad, a group even more radical than Hamas.
The tunnel that appears in the report is one of those used in offensive tactics. That is, those that are designed to approach the border and launch missiles against Israel. According to some sources, these tunnels are the ones that Hamas used on October 7 to reach the fence that separates Gaza and Israel. The jihadists emerged a few meters from the barrier, blew it up with explosives and crossed into Israel to carry out the massacre. This network is also prepared to act against soldiers who enter Gaza: they go outside to attack the IDF from behind when they have surpassed an underground position.
In some Hamas propaganda videos, jihadists have even been seen traveling by motorcycle inside the underground pipelines, which shows the capacity of the ‘Gaza metro’ to move troops. The images also reveal how jihadists use precarious tools to continue expanding the underground network. The terrorists dig with shovels and pickaxes, as well as jackhammers, and use buckets to extract the earth from inside.
Taxes and great fortunes
Many of these tunnels are being destroyed by Israel’s bombing of the Gaza Strip. In some of the images you can see how the first explosion of an aerial bomb generates secondary detonations seconds later hundreds of meters away. These recordings reveal that the IDF is reaching the tunnels used as arsenals and that the underground blast wave is destroying remote weapons depots.
Among the videos that have been recovered in the last few hours, there is also an interview with a Hamas political leader, Mousa Abu Marzouk, in which he explains the functionality of the tunnels. When asked why this underground network is not being dedicated to protecting civilians, the man assures that its function is to shelter jihadists. “75% of the inhabitants of Gaza are refugees and therefore their protection corresponds to the United Nations,” he adds.
Although the tunnels are now the key piece of Hamas’ strategy, originally they served to maintain the economy of the area and introduce all types of products into the Strip. Their first location was the border between Egypt and Gaza and they were excavated in 2000 by smugglers. Some of them achieved great fortunes thanks to merchandise such as tobacco or similar products. Hamas even began to collect taxes from people who used this underground network to move their goods. In 2007 the blockade of Gaza was declared and the function of the tunnels exploded. Seven years later, both Egypt and Israel began to destroy them. By that time, Hamas was already trained in preparing these infrastructures and made them the axis of its attacks.
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