Tunnel system in the Gaza Strip

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Tunnel between the Gaza Strip and Israel exposed by the Israel Defense Forces (2006)

The tunnel system in the Gaza Strip is a Hamas- controlled, ramified system of illegal tunnels that run from the Gaza Strip to Egypt and Israel , or run within Gaza without crossing the border. Daily necessities as well as military equipment and warfare agents are imported into the Gaza Strip via the tunnel connections to Egypt. The tunnels leading to Israel, on the other hand, are primarily used to carry out terrorist attacks or carry out kidnappings. The Hamas fighters also use them as an arsenal and to launch rockets. Within Gaza, the tunnels also serve as escape routes for Hamas fighters and senior members of the organization. The full extent of the tunneling in the Israeli border area only became clear during Operation Protective Edge in July 2014.

background

Gaza Strip

The Gaza Strip borders Israel to the north and east, Egypt to the south and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. The land borders of the Gaza Strip have been secured by the barrier around the Gaza Strip since 1994 . There is no official way to enter or leave the Gaza Strip except through border crossings and sea routes. The border crossings with Israel and the sea route are controlled by Israel. In particular, weapons and goods suitable for war in the broadest sense cannot be imported into the Gaza Strip from Israel or by sea. The border crossing into Egypt is controlled by Egypt, with Israel and Egypt jointly determining the rules for border traffic. It is therefore impossible to import weapons and ammunition via the Egyptian border crossing. As a result, there have been no new war-ready goods in the Gaza Strip since 1994.

Smuggling tunnel

Tunneling

Smugglers tunnel near Rafah (2009)

Smugglers have been digging tunnels between Egypt and the Gaza Strip since 1994. The tunnels are usually dug by independent smugglers from cellars or from olive groves. They run below the border at a depth of up to 18 meters and can reach a length of 1.7 km. Often there are agreements on profit sharing between homeowners and tunnel operators. The total number of tunnels was estimated to be around 1,500 before the 2008/09 Gaza War and over 800 in 2010. In the meantime, the number is said to have risen to well over 1,000 tunnels with a standard length of around one kilometer. Due to limited space, the tunnels are even excavated on several levels. The establishment of an average tunnel cost about 90,000  dollars .

Some of the tunnels are just big enough for a person to squeeze through. Other tunnels allow vehicles to pass through. The tunnels are developed differently. On the one hand, there are tunnels that were built without any mining safety and are constantly threatened with collapse. On the other hand, there are also tunnels with a tunnel wall made of concrete. Some tunnels even have extremely stable tubes with freight elevators and rails, power supply, ventilation and intercom systems that even allow trucks to pass through. Since weapons of various kinds are also smuggled through the tunnels, Israel and Egypt are striving for security reasons to prevent the smuggling by destroying the tunnels. Attempts by the Egyptian army to prevent the heavy smuggling through underground steel structures could, however, be circumvented through deeper tunnels (up to 40 meters underground).

Operation and use

The benefits of the tunnels are presented differently on the Israeli and Palestinian sides. Hamas describes the supply of clothing, hygiene articles, electronic devices, medicines, food and everyday items through the tunnels to the population of the Gaza Strip as vital, as does the supply of fuel and building materials (cement, gravel, etc.), which Israel considers relevant to the war and can therefore only be classified as importable to a limited extent. Many Palestinians see the tunnels as a lifeline , especially in times of repetitive blockades , as a wide range of essential goods can reach the Gaza Strip in this way despite the blockade.

From Israel's point of view, however, the tunnel system to Egypt primarily serves this

  • Smuggling weapons for radical Islamic Hamas to fight Israel and to fire rockets at Israel,
  • Smuggling people who are banned from crossing the border due to visa or criminal problems,
  • Smuggling of goods and consumer goods during times when border crossings are closed (e.g. during Operation Pillar of Cloud ). For example, a lion was even introduced through one of the tunnels for one of the zoos in Gaza, but it woke up during the transport due to insufficient sedation and a smuggler was attacked.
  • Drug smuggling.

The construction and operation of the tunnel is controlled by Hamas and imposes high taxes on the smuggled goods.

Effects of the tunnel

Israel

Since 1994 many thousands of rockets have been fired from the Gaza Strip towards inhabited areas in Israel. The attacks have intensified massively, especially since Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2007. According to the Israeli position, the tunnels allow the radical Islamic Hamas to smuggle rockets or rocket parts into the Gaza Strip.

Gaza Strip

At the height of the blockade, around 15,000 Palestinians were working in the tunnel economy, with the official unemployment rate in Gaza being over 30%. The city of Rafah, seat of the Palestinian Authority , developed into a flourishing economic center and trading center for goods. But not all Gaza residents benefited from the trade. In order to get relatively expensive goods such as weapons, drugs and luxury goods, money from the Gaza Strip, which is actually needed to build a functioning state system to supply the population, has to be paid to the smugglers. As a result, the Gaza Strip lost important funds. The smugglers, rich people and Hamas in particular benefited from the trade in smuggled goods from the tunnels. The trade, on the other hand, harms the needy, i.e. the vast majority of the population in Gaza.

Hamas also benefits directly from the strictly controlled tunnels: it levies taxes on the tunnel operators or collects bribes in order to tolerate smuggling through the tunnels. According to observers, Hamas’s income from tunnels is estimated at $ 750 million a year, making it an important source of Hamas’s income in times of declining support from Syria and the Islamic Republic of Iran . At the same time, there was a high level of corruption in this context, so that Hamas' popularity fell. The suspicion that Hamas was profiting from the blockade also arose.

The tunnel workers have long been among the highest paid workers in Gaza. In a fatal accident they were hailed by the Islamist Hamas as martyrs active in the resistance. According to official information, at least 160 children were also killed during excavation work.

Egypt

For the structurally weak regions of Egypt near the border, illegal tunnel trade is also an economic factor. The trade in goods and the smuggling of weapons and people are an important source of income for the region and the Bedouins living there, neglected by the Egyptian central government , which already has an impact on the traditional way of life, the culture and social structures of the Negev nomads living in Egypt .

Countermeasures

Israel, Egypt, the United States and other NATO countries have agreed to curb smuggling into Gaza by land and water. Although the Israeli Air Force was able to shut down over 100 tunnels in the 2008/2009 Gaza War , many of the tunnels were reopened a few weeks later. Since 2009, Egypt has been trying to get the smuggler's tunnels under control with the help of an underground barrier. To do this, steel parts 30 meters long are rammed into the earth over a length of 10 kilometers. However, this barrier is not fully developed. The smuggling tunnels were also targeted by Israeli air strikes during Operation Cloud Pillar in 2012.

The new Egyptian government has tightened controls at the borders since its inception, but destroyed tunnels were initially rebuilt and the dangerous smuggling continued to flourish. This led to tightened measures by the Egyptian government. Since the summer of 2013, around two-thirds of the approximately 1200 smuggling tunnels that lead from the Sinai Peninsula into the Palestinian Territory have been destroyed by the Egyptian army, largely preventing smuggling. This exacerbated the shortage of essential goods in the Gaza Strip, and inflation rose as a result.

On April 16, 2018, the Israeli army presented a system with which they can detect and neutralize tunnels. The ground is scanned with a mobile laboratory after a giant drill has penetrated several meters into the earth. The soldiers in the laboratory use the transmitted data to create various diagrams and surveys. They search for and decipher changes and irregularities in the ground, which they can use to identify tunnels.

Tunnel to Israel

IDF soldiers find a tunnel entrance in Gaza (2014)
Tunnel entrance in a residential building (2014)

In addition to the smuggling tunnels on the Egyptian border, there is an extensive tunnel system to Israel and within Gaza. Even before the Gaza Strip was cordoned off, short and simple tunnels were dug between Israel and Gaza, which initially served primarily to smuggle goods, but increasingly also to smuggle Hamas fighters into Israeli territory. In 2006, Hamas fighters entered Israel through such a tunnel and kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit .

After the operation pillar of defense of the Israeli Defense Forces in Gaza in 2012, Hamas stepped up the building of attack tunnels into Israel. The Israeli side was aware of this, but in the run-up to the ground offensive launched primarily with the aim of destroying such tunnels - sustainable destruction from the air would hardly have been possible - the extent of the 2014 Gaza conflict was underestimated. By July 2014, over 45 tunnels leading to Israel had been discovered. Many more are suspected.

The quality of the 15–30 meters underground, up to two kilometers long, 75 centimeters wide and 1.70 meter high tunnels is unexpectedly high. They are reinforced with concrete, there is electricity, a functioning ventilation system and up to seventy side shafts. They were probably only erected after the November 2012 ceasefire agreement, which included an end to import restrictions on concrete and steel, as over 60,000 tons of concrete, mostly supplied from Israel for humanitarian purposes, were used to secure the tunnels. Colonel Oshik Azulai commented in the New York Times that it was like a subway under Gaza. In order not to be discovered by Israeli geophones while digging , no heavy equipment could be used. Accordingly, Hamas must have been working non-stop. Supplies of food, Israeli uniforms, zip ties and narcotics were discovered, as were weapons workshops, storage rooms and missile launchers.

The branched network of tunnels, some of which penetrate several hundred meters into Israeli territory and ends shortly before the nearby kibbutzim , was apparently intended to be used for coordinated attacks on surrounding Israeli villages. Among other things, fighters from the radical Islamist Hamas have been sighted several times near kibbutz Nir Am, less than two kilometers from the Gaza Strip , who had penetrated Israel through such an attack tunnel. Although most of the attacks could be repulsed, there were also fatal attacks on Israeli soldiers.

Interrogations of Hamas supporters captured in Gaza are also said to have revealed that a mass assassination attempt was planned for the Jewish New Year celebrations in September 2014. In a coordinated attack, hundreds of Hamas fighters were to penetrate through the tunnels into the border area around Gaza, attack six villages there at the same time and kill and abduct as many civilians as possible, according to the Israeli military.

Since the end of Operation Protective Edge, around 30 more of these terror tunnels have been discovered and destroyed by Israeli forces. Hamas is increasingly using schools and other facilities protected under international martial law as protection for its tunnel system: In June 2017, one was found in the Maghasi refugee camp among two schools run by the UN refugee agency UNRWA . In October 2017 UNRWA itself discovered a tunnel under one of its schools and protested against the "violation of the location and the disregard for the neutrality of the UN's locations". Israel's UN Ambassador Danny Danon interpreted the discoveries as evidence that "the children of Gaza are being used as human shields ".

On October 30, 2017, the Israeli army blew up an underground corridor near Kissufim that was still under construction . The tunnel belonged to the terrorist organization Islamic Jihad in Palestine and led from Gaza to Israel. The demolition on Israeli territory reportedly resulted in secondary explosions caused by explosives stored in the tunnel and killed twelve terrorists. The dead were on Israeli territory.

On January 10, 2018, the Israeli Air Force blasted a tunnel that protruded 180 meters from the Gaza Strip into Israeli territory. The tunnel ran from the city of Rafah below the Kerem Shalom crossing . There are also gas and fuel pipelines above the corridor, as well as an Israeli military post.

Web links

Commons : Tunnels in Gaza Strip  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c The hard-working tunnel diggers of Rafah , Spiegel Online, November 24, 2012.
  2. ↑ Israeli Army: The Terror Tunnel to Gaza. Israel Today, October 24, 2013; Retrieved January 1, 2014 (with video).
  3. ↑ Times Online: In the tunnels of Gaza, smugglers risk death for weapons and profit
  4. ^ The tunnel lifeline , Deutschlandfunk , February 13, 2010.
  5. ^ Steel curtain , Süddeutsche Zeitung, May 17, 2010.
  6. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k The Hamas Terror Tunnels , Zeit-Online, July 19, 2014.
  7. ^ The Observer , June 7, 2009, Tunnel fraud leaves Gazans on verge of financial ruin
  8. ↑ a b Rafah Tunnels Smugglers Fed Up with Hamas' Heavy Taxes ( memento from January 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) (with photo), al-monitor.com, February 15, 2012.
  9. ↑ a b c Hamas: Background and Issues for Congress (PDF; 787 kB)
  10. ↑ James Verini: The Tunnels of Gaza National Geographic, December 2012
  11. ↑ Hamas burns recreational drugs, taxes cigarettes , ynetnews.com
  12. ↑ Gaza Tunnels. The National Geographic Magazine. December 2012
  13. ↑ Divided into four by the tunnel , n-tv
  14. ^ The Tunnels of Gaza , The National Geographic Magazine, December 2012.
  15. ^ The Egyptian Bedouins and the Gaza Tunnels , arte-tv.
  16. ^ Peter Münch: Steel curtain ( Memento from December 13, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) , Süddeutsche Zeitung, May 17, 2010.
  17. ↑ Egypt builds underground metal wall in the Gaza Strip , Der Standard, December 10, 2009.
  18. ↑ Gaza: Now the smuggling tunnels are being repaired , Zeit-Online, November 7, 2012.
  19. ↑ Markus Symank: Egypt is sidelining Hamas , Deutsche Welle, March 5, 2014, accessed on July 11, 2014.
  20. ↑ Army provides system for Aufspühren of terrorist tunnels ago In: Israel Network .com, April 16, 2018 accessed May 1, 2018th
  21. ↑ a b c Hamas underground corridors: Israel's high-tech army desperate for low-tech tunnels , SPON, July 29, 2014.
  22. ↑ a b c d Kilometers of tunnels, dug by hand , Welt.de, July 25, 2014.
  23. ↑ Israel underestimated the tunnel system , Badische Zeitung , July 23, 2014.
  24. ↑ Hamas and the Underground War , Tagesspiegel , July 25, 2014.
  25. ↑ Middle East Conflict: Gaza's B level , Frankfurter Rundschau , July 23, 2014.
  26. ^ Four IDF soldiers killed by terrorist squad that infiltrated Israel from Gaza , website www.jpost.com, accessed on July 21, 2014
  27. ↑ Israel protests against tunnel under UN school in Gaza Strip , Der Standard, October 30, 2017
  28. ↑ Israelnetz.de of November 3, 2017 , accessed on November 11, 2017
  29. ^ Israelnetz.de , accessed on November 10, 2017
  30. ↑ israelnetz.de , accessed on November 10, 2017
  31. ↑ israelnetz.de , accessed on December 4, 2017
  32. ↑ Air force blows up Hamas attack tunnel In Israelnetz.de from January 15, 2018, accessed on August 8, 2018