What Hamas Has Wrought, Israel Defense Forces Wreck

"The way it is now it's not livable [Beit Hanoun]."

"This is not beautiful what we're doing. There is nothing nice about wars, but this is necessary."

"Our goal is to hurt Hamas and destroy Hamas as a political and military organization, but you can see that these [tunnel] shafts are under normal people's homes."

Lt.Col. Amit, Israel Defense Forces 

Smoke rises over Beit Hanoun in Northern Gaza after an israeli air strike on November 22, 2023. “This is not beautiful what we’re doing ... but this is necessary,” says an Israeli officer. Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Israel's mission to destroy an estimated 500 kilometres of Hams tunnels constructed across the Gaza Strip for years at great expense and concentrated labour and care, in the process depriving ordinary Gazan Palestinians with adequate infrastructure in developing a future for an advanced society with aspirations of normalcy, is a time-consuming but necessary burden on the military. And for the inhabitants of Beit Hanon, at one time host to over 50,000 people, most of whom have now fled elsewhere, it is the case of a scale of urban destruction whose reversal cannot be guaranteed.

Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip has been the site of the Israeli military tasked to destroy close to 100 shafts and several dozen tunnels, according to Lt.Col. Amit, overseeing the destruction. This town was among the areas from which Hamas launched its surprise invasion on Israel that resulted in the deaths of some 1,200 people on October 7, a horrific attack of unrestrained savagery, a horror visited upon civilian enclaves that was responsible for launching Israel's retaliatory war on Hamas.

Near Gaza, the Tze'elim military base is where the 252nd Reserve Division is based. This is the Division held responsible for destroying the tunnel network in a part of Gaza, with other IDF Divisions tasked elsewhere with the same difficult, but absolutely necessary goal. The deliberate construction of tunnels throughout Gaza, a labyrinth of secret underground weapons storage units, attack launching sites, safe havens for terrorists, enabled Hamas for decades to challenge Israel's existence.

Tunnel destruction advances Israel's goal of dismantling the infrastructure of Hamas to deny the terrorists the opportunity of repetition of the deadly October 7 assault on southern Israel. The Hamas spokesmen have made no secret of their intention despite all odds at the present time, to repeat that horrendous attack, as many times as their leadership deems necessary to achieve their aspirational destruction of Jews and the Jewish state.

The fighting has driven inhabitants of Gaza south as the IDF has advised them, for their safety. But Israel's plans are also evolving in recognition of the inescapable fact that there is no territory in Gaza that is not riddled underground with Hamas's operative tunnel system. And so the IDF has turned its attention as well to the South, and people there have been advised urgently to move once again. This time, a map indicating 'safe zones' has been produced to help the displaced understand where they will be out of danger during bombardment.

It is the misfortune of Palestinian Gaza's civilian population that Hamas with great calculation built their tunnels under densely populated areas. Many of the tunnels are booby-trapped, as well as are houses and roadways. That being so, heavy de-mining equipment like bulldozers is required in the work of dismantling the tunnels. The military had photographs and videos of rockets, grenades and Kalashnikov automatic rifles found cached in homes, schools and hospitals.

To the present, 800 tunnels have been discovered by the IDF across Gaza which has managed to destroy 500 of them. Beit Hanoun happened to be an area of particular concern. Some of the shafts discovered there are 30 metres in depth. To destroy them remains a painstaking process requiring a considerable amount of explosives to break down concrete walls and blast-resistant doors.

An Israeli soldier shows the media an underground Hamas tunnel found underneath Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. Photo by Victor R. Caivano/AP, File