Why Israel will never manage to destroy all Hamas tunnels in Gaza
JVL Introduction
Whether people like it or not, Hamas represents the idea central to Palestinian identity viz an uncrushable aspiration for freedom and national self-determination. Were every Hamas militant to be killed, new recruits would soon replace them. Israel is recruiting replacements at a rate of knots now.
Here, Haaretz journalist Anshel Pfeffer gives a military not a political analysis of why Hamas can’t be crushed. Its hundreds of miles of tunnels – probably equivalent to London’s Underground – have made it not just ideologically, but physically indestructible. It always has somewhere to hide, regroup, store provisions, weaponry – and hostages.
The IDF and Israel’s government know this. Continuing their ‘strategy’ cynically condemns the hostages to death. The truth is that above ground Gaza is dystopian horror, but in the tunnels Hamas holds the bargaining chips.
NW
This article was originally published by Haaretz on Sun 21 Jan 2024. Read the original here.
Why Israel will never manage to destroy all Hamas tunnels in Gaza
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For the first time ever, the IOF on the ground are facing the Palestinian Resistance, who are extremely well drilled and trained in urban guerilla warfare. The Zionist conscripts are like Boy Scouts at a summer camp, and the resistance knows all their neighbourhoods intimately. In addition, the resistance has drones and missiles, which are far more sophisticated and able to identify occupation forces from the air. That’s why the occupiers have withdrawn their ground troops, many killed and injured and mentally scarred. The resistance is dug-in and, in spite of the continuing genocidal murder of innocents by the USA / UK—backed occupation entity, they won’t defeat the Palestinians, in tunnels, on land or in spirit.
You mean the ones that israel built?? Or the omes Palestinians built on the borders to get goods through. Calling them hamas tunnels is not helpful and not truthful.
Fascinating, and on any level, impressive and horrifying (I’m claustrophobic!) all at the same time. What impressive resistance to Israel/IDF and its imperialist and murderous project.
This does bring to mind the tunnels dug by Allied prisoners to escape Nazi POW camps during WW2, remembering that Gaza is just that, a vast concentration camp. As well as seawater, it appears that gas has been used to try to kill Palestinians underground, as claimed by the mother of a dead Israeli hostage. Another reminder of WW2. There are also
Gazan accounts recently of captured youths strapped with explosives by the IDF, with a camera and tied to a line, pushed through a tunnel as a human shield. If movement is seen in the tunnel, the IDF blow up the boy and hope to take some fighters with him. If not, they pull him out to try again. The brutality of this war is appalling.