By: Yudhajit Shankar Das. Below the Gaza Strip, there seems to be another city that evades the eye. A network of 1,300 tunnels, stretching around 500 kilometres. Though they are generally up to 30 metres deep, the tunnels could at times go as deep as 70 meters. Some parts of the tunnels are reinforced by concrete to withstand Israeli bombing and also have electricity. These tunnels are now the biggest threat the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) faces as it waits for a nod to conduct what could be the most massive ground offensive in Gaza after the October 7 Hamas attacks in which hundreds of people were butchered. Experts believe that some of the over 200 Israeli hostages in Hamas captivity could be in the tunnels. This theory has been given more strength by the account of the elderly hostage released by Hamas recently. She narrated how after being abducted and reaching Gaza, she walked several kilometers to a network of tunnels that she described as “looking like a spider web.” Armed with this information experts believe that a combination of dense urban terrain and subterranean tunnel networks will make the Israeli military’s task in Gaza very tough and dangerous. Many tunnels have been created under the border between Egypt and Gaza to deliver all sorts of merchandise — fuel, clothes, food, weapons and even livestock — to get round the Israeli blockade since 2007. From cows to cars, the underground system found a way of getting almost anything through and grew to include hundreds of passageways — and made rich men out of those that ran them. To control the building of these tunnels Israel even tried to stop delivery of cement and steel. Fearing that Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers would use construction materials to fortify its positions and build tunnels to aid attacks on the Jewish state, Israel banned their transfer in 2007.#israelpalestineconflict #israelhamaswar #gaza #hamasattack #gazaunderattack #hamastunnels #iranvsisrael
