Stealth Engineering

"They lead] from mosque to mosque; mosque to house; house to hospital; kindergarten to house .... It is estimated that gunmen are able to live inside a tunnel for weeks at a time, apparently sustained by the quantities of dates and water left behind."
"Basically, a Hamas terrorist can enter one of these tunnels in civilian clothes without arms and pop up somewhere else, fully clothed in an Israeli army uniform brandishing a Kalashnikov, ready to attack someone."
Major Arieh Shalicar, Israel Defense Forces

AP Photo/Jack Guez, Pool, File    An Israeli army officer walks through a tunnel used by Hamas militants for cross-border attacks, at the Israel-Gaza Border, July 25, 2014.

The discovery of the networks of tunnels burrowed deep underground leading from Gaza into Israel has surprised those living on the kibbutzes close to where the tunnel exits end Some of the tunnels represent quite impressive engineering feats. Some have been found with ventilation systems, electricity and food supplies. Some have been found to contain weapons stores, army uniforms and motorcycles. And supplied as well with chloroform and handcuffs; your basic abduction kit.

Once the discovery of their presence was fully realized, Operation Protective Edge turned from a purely air-strike mission to dissuade Hamas from continued rocketry fire into Israel, to a boots-on-the-ground mission dispatching IDF soldiers and sappers to embark on a search-and-destroy operation. Of the 32 tunnels that were detected all have been destroyed. But not before a few of the tunnels had proven their value to Hamas, with the ambush of Israeli soldiers and the casualties caused.

In the fall of 2013, IDF intelligence had its first introduction to these elaborate tunnels a few hundred metres distant from one Kibbutz where a steep slope had to be negotiated to reach the entrance (exit from Gaza) into the small opening which, once accessed, was transformed to a subterranean concrete-lined structure where people could stand erect and see into the distance. The dimension of the vast expanse was perceptible, and the nature of the structure imposing.

This tunnel was not only lined with concrete and equipped with cables, conduits, finished ceilings, communication lines and pulley systems, it was estimated to have cost millions to build, taking several years in its completion, and mostly by hand. Of immense tonnages of cement, a material banned for the most part for delivery to the Gaza Strip for that very potential. The originally-built rudimentary tunnels built to smuggle goods and weapons, morphed into sophisticated, complex burrows.

It has been revealed that over 160 young Palestinians, youths and children, were engaged in tunnel work, who died during the work being done. The total numbers of young Palestinians engaged in the tunnel structures has not been revealed and likely won't be. Just as young Palestinians are encouraged to become suicide bombers, labouring in dangerous conditions to build tunnels represents just another sacrifice for the cause.

Gauging the financial cost of construction, much could have been achieved to benefit Palestinians materially in Gaza had the tunnels not drained needed funds.

The final transition brought tunnels designed to service terror-related actions as ready staging platforms. Technology does exist to detect the presence of tunnels, but of a more modest scope, buried not quite so deeply underground. Whereas these latter tunnels are now 20 metres deep, beyond the current capacity of technology to detect. It is human intelligence that the IDF must rely upon and information garnered through house-to-house searches.

As for the destruction of those tunnels; effectively it must transcend blowing up entrance and exits which leaves the tunnel itself relatively intact readily given to resurrection by Hamas sappers prepared to dig bypass sections. The destruction of such tunnels requires their entire length to be destroyed, branches located and equally destroyed.

And should any Hamas operatives remain within those tunnels, they too are destroyed