Hamas Still Tunneling

The Fellowship  |  February 28, 2017

As seen by the release of a report on the IDF’s war against Hamas in 2014, Israel continues to reflect on its past skirmishes, hopefully learning how better to protect its people. However, warns The Times of Israel’s intrepid and insightful Avi Issacharoff, himself an IDF veteran, Israel’s Gaza-based foe has only looked forward – continuing work on its network of terror tunnels that stretch into Israeli territory:

Hamas has already got at least 15 tunnels under the border with Israel. Right now.

Meanwhile inside Gaza, a subterranean network thrives — criss-crossing over tens of miles — transferring supplies, enabling gunmen to move around at will.

Residents of Tel Aviv, who are living amid years of construction for a city subway project, can only be jealous of the dizzying pace at which the diggers move beneath Gaza and at the border.

The IDF has upped its preparedness and training to try to confront the tunnel threat. There has been much talk of the barrier Israel is constructing to block the cross-border tunnels. But nobody expects such a barrier to be completed within the next couple of years. Despite the comptroller’s report, with its repetition of the familiar litany of failures, therefore, Israel still lacks an effective defense against the Hamas tunnels. Israel also still lacks an effective response to Hamas’s ongoing rearmament…