IDF shores up underground defences against Hamas

It has been three years since the last major conflagration in Gaza, but after another round in the war of words between Israel and Hamas last week, it is starting to look like a matter of time before an escalation beyond mere rhetoric.

Last Wednesday, the IDF revealed new details of the 3 billion shekel (£640 million) programme to build an underground obstacle - essentially an underground wall - around the Gaza Strip, which is planned to prevent Hamas infiltrating Israel from its network of tunnels. 

On completion, the obstacle would deny Hamas one of its most potent offensive options. But construction is estimated to take another two years and the Israeli security establishment is concerned Hamas will strike first, rather than losing its military asset. 

In an attempt to deter Hamas, the IDF also released a dossier containing details of the intelligence picture it has compiled of Hamas’s tunnel network. The dossier details precise locations of two entry shafts to tunnels under the northern suburbs of Gaza City. The shafts are beneath civilian homes where entire families live. 

“These are legitimate military targets,” the commander of the IDF’s Southern Command, Major General Eyal Zamir, said. “Anyone there is endangering themselves if fighting breaks out. We have no will or intention to harm civilians, but Hamas’s pattern will force us to act in self-defence to protect our own people”. 

A  Hamas spokesman responded: “Israel’s threats don’t frighten us. We will continue holding on to all the means of resistance possible. All the steps carried out by the [Israeli] occupation won’t provide them with security as long they are occupying our land and besieging our people”. 

Israeli intelligence claims that despite the increasing shortages and crumbling infrastructure in Gaza, Hamas is still diverting funds from civilian needs to construction of new tunnels and the manufacture of rockets. The chief concern within the IDF is that Hamas’s military commanders will not wait for the underground obstacle to be completed, but will use one of the tunnels to launch a surprise attack on an Israeli village or military outpost, with the aim of capturing soldiers and achieving a psychological blow against the Israeli home-front. 

There are growing voices within the Israeli government for creating a “civil option” for Gaza, in the shape of an artificial island, near the shoreline, which would provide a supervised port and new power and desalination plants, to alleviate the shortages of electricity and drinking water. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman are, for now, opposed to this plan, which they claim would “reward Hamas”. 

Meanwhile, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is also pressuring Gaza and cutting off funds as part of his plan to pressure the rival Hamas leadership. An Egyptian plan to open the Rafah border crossing for goods and people, in return for new security arrangements on the border, could alleviate the situation within Gaza but will not by itself create major incentives for Hamas’s military wing to hold off a future attack. 

Three years since the end of Operation Protective Edge, Hamas has kept to the ceasefire in Israel and focused on rebuilding its arsenal while the civilian infrastructure continues to crumble. As electricity is available for only four hours a day and Hamas now faces the prospect of losing one of its key military assets, the ceasefire is looking increasingly tenuous.