The Wall Street Journal, citing American and Israeli officials, said that about 80% of the tunnels of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in the Gaza Strip remain intact after weeks of attempts to destroy them by Israel.
The American newspaper pointed out that officials in Washington and Tel Aviv are facing difficulty in accurately assessing the level of destruction of the tunnel network, partly due to their inability to accurately determine the area and extent of these underground tunnels.
Officials from the United States and Israel estimate that between 20% and 40% of Hamas’ tunnels have been damaged or rendered inoperable, most of them in northern Gaza.
Tunnel destruction
The Wall Street Journal reported that Israel sought to “disinfect” the tunnels through various methods, including installing massive pumps to flood them with seawater, destroying them with airstrikes and liquid explosives, searching them with dogs and robots, destroying their entrances and raiding them by trained soldiers.
According to American and Israeli officials, seawater eroded some of these tunnels, but the overall effort was not as effective as hoped, as walls, barriers, and other unexpected defenses slowed or stopped the flow of water.
The newspaper pointed out that Israel has specialized engineering units that include engineers trained to destroy tunnels, and not to search for what it called “hostages” and “senior leaders” of Hamas, noting that Israel needs more forces to destroy these tunnels.
Realistic goals
A Haaretz newspaper report had indicated – earlier – that an assessment concluded that the Israeli army would not be able to destroy all the tunnels of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad movements in Gaza, and perhaps it would not be able to destroy most of them.
According to this Israeli newspaper, the security establishment will one day be forced to admit that destroying tunnel networks was never a realistic goal.
Israeli Yedioth Ahronoth also said that the army was surprised by the size of the tunnel network built by the Palestinian resistance in Gaza, which exceeded Israeli estimates before the war hundreds of times.
This newspaper reported that the army was surprised that the size of the tunnel network in the Gaza Strip exceeded the estimates of military commanders by about 600%.
