What Hamas Has Wrought, Israel Defense Forces Wreck
"The way it is now it's not livable [Beit Hanoun].""This is not beautiful what we're doing. There is nothing nice about wars, but this is necessary.""Our goal is to hurt Hamas and destroy Hamas as a political and military organization, but you can see that these [tunnel] shafts are under normal people's homes."Lt.Col. Amit, Israel Defense Forces
Israel's
mission to destroy an estimated 500 kilometres of Hams tunnels
constructed across the Gaza Strip for years at great expense and
concentrated labour and care, in the process depriving ordinary Gazan
Palestinians with adequate infrastructure in developing a future for an
advanced society with aspirations of normalcy, is a time-consuming but
necessary burden on the military. And for the inhabitants of Beit Hanon,
at one time host to over 50,000 people, most of whom have now fled
elsewhere, it is the case of a scale of urban destruction whose reversal
cannot be guaranteed.
Beit
Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip has been the site of the Israeli
military tasked to destroy close to 100 shafts and several dozen
tunnels, according to Lt.Col. Amit, overseeing the destruction. This
town was among the areas from which Hamas launched its surprise invasion
on Israel that resulted in the deaths of some 1,200 people on October
7, a horrific attack of unrestrained savagery, a horror visited upon
civilian enclaves that was responsible for launching Israel's
retaliatory war on Hamas.
Near
Gaza, the Tze'elim military base is where the 252nd Reserve Division is
based. This is the Division held responsible for destroying the tunnel
network in a part of Gaza, with other IDF Divisions tasked elsewhere
with the same difficult, but absolutely necessary goal. The deliberate
construction of tunnels throughout Gaza, a labyrinth of secret
underground weapons storage units, attack launching sites, safe havens
for terrorists, enabled Hamas for decades to challenge Israel's
existence.
Tunnel
destruction advances Israel's goal of dismantling the infrastructure of
Hamas to deny the terrorists the opportunity of repetition of the
deadly October 7 assault on southern Israel. The Hamas spokesmen have
made no secret of their intention despite all odds at the present time,
to repeat that horrendous attack, as many times as their leadership
deems necessary to achieve their aspirational destruction of Jews and
the Jewish state.
The
fighting has driven inhabitants of Gaza south as the IDF has advised
them, for their safety. But Israel's plans are also evolving in
recognition of the inescapable fact that there is no territory in Gaza
that is not riddled underground with Hamas's operative tunnel system.
And so the IDF has turned its attention as well to the South, and people
there have been advised urgently to move once again. This time, a map
indicating 'safe zones' has been produced to help the displaced
understand where they will be out of danger during bombardment.
It
is the misfortune of Palestinian Gaza's civilian population that Hamas
with great calculation built their tunnels under densely populated
areas. Many of the tunnels are booby-trapped, as well as are houses and
roadways. That being so, heavy de-mining equipment like bulldozers is
required in the work of dismantling the tunnels. The military had
photographs and videos of rockets, grenades and Kalashnikov automatic
rifles found cached in homes, schools and hospitals.
To
the present, 800 tunnels have been discovered by the IDF across Gaza
which has managed to destroy 500 of them. Beit Hanoun happened to be an
area of particular concern. Some of the shafts discovered there are 30
metres in depth. To destroy them remains a painstaking process requiring
a considerable amount of explosives to break down concrete walls and
blast-resistant doors.
Photo by Victor R. Caivano/AP, File |
Labels: Barbaric Atrocities in Israel, Hamas Invasion of Israel, Israel Defense Forces Invasion of Gaza, Palestinians Uprooted, tunnel Networks Destroyed
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