Ex-top officials: Int’l alliance should finish destroying tunnels
One scenario that is not being publicly discussed but that former top Israeli officials are aware of is the possibility that Israel may request a global alliance to finish destroying Hamas’s tunnel network in Gaza, The Jerusalem Post has learned.
The reason for such a scenario, though ideally Israel would prefer to destroy all of the tunnels itself, is simply that it may run out of time to do so before reaching a point at which it can no longer freely operate standing forces deep within Gazan cities and towns.
Getting a global alliance to sign on to the idea of finishing the job, top sources say, could delegate achieving the goal beyond the point at which Israel can work on the issue itself, and potentially justify targeted Israeli returns into Gaza to handle the issue if such a global alliance failed to follow through.
Such a scenario is not being publicly discussed because delegating an Israeli security issue to a global third party could be politically unpopular, and in any event, the government is currently avoiding discussing any concrete plans related to how Gaza will be managed once the IDF withdraws.
Two weeks ago, The Wall Street Journal reported that only 20-40% of all of Hamas’s tunnel network has been destroyed or neutralized in the three months of the Gaza invasion.
On December 3, the Post reported that while the IDF had taken control of 80% or more of northern Gaza by mid-November, it still may only have destroyed 20% or less of northern tunnels to date, without even having done much against southern Gaza tunnels.
On December 21, the Post reported that IDF sources had said that it would take “years” to destroy the entire tunnel network.
Later, and despite an entire additional month of fighting, including taking over most of Khan Yunis, multiple additional defense officials confirmed this estimate was unchanged – as recently as January 29.
On Wednesday, the IDF announced that it had found yet another humongous “strategic tunnel” of Hamas in Khan Yunis where 12 hostages had been kept in cages.
While this marked an additional success in taking apart Hamas’s underground infrastructure, the fact that such a large tunnel was only discovered in February also showed
how far the IDF is from fully eliminating the tunnel threat, especially since that would include destroying the immense number of smaller tunnels.