Hamas's mysterious maze of tunnel networks in Gaza

According to CNN, there are countless underground tunnels in Gaza, the best known are the passageways used to smuggle goods from Egypt and conduct attacks on Israel .

But there still exists a second underground network that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) often call "Gaza metro". It is a vast maze of tunnels, several kilometers underground, used to transport people and goods; to store missiles and ammunition; as well as placing Hamas command and control centers – away from surveillance by IDF fighter jets and drones.

In 2021, Hamas claimed to have built a 500 km tunnel under the Gaza Strip, although it is unclear whether this number is accurate. If true, Hamas's underground tunnels are nearly half the size of the New York City subway system, USA.

"It's a very complex, very large network of tunnels over a fairly small portion of territory," said Professor Daphne Richemond-Barak at Israel's Reichman University and an expert on underground warfare.

Hamas tunnel system in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas tunnel system in the Gaza Strip. The blue lines are the current tunnel system in Gaza, according to the IDF. The red lines are tunnels destroyed by the IDF in recent years. Screenshots

It is unclear how much money the tunnel network costs Hamas - the force that controls the impoverished coastal strip of Gaza. This number can be very significant, both in terms of human and material resources.

Gaza has been blockaded by Israel on land, sea, and air, and by land blockade by Egypt since 2007. Gaza is said to not have the giant machinery often used to build deep underground tunnels.

Experts say the miners used basic tools to build the underground tunnel, reinforcing it with concrete and connecting it to electricity. Israel has long accused Hamas of using concrete intended for civilian and humanitarian purposes to build the tunnel.

Tunnels have been an effective tool of war since medieval times. Today, tunnels give forces like Hamas an advantage in asymmetric warfare against a more advanced military like the IDF.

What makes Hamas's tunnels different from al-Qaeda's tunnels in the mountains of Afghanistan is that they are built beneath one of the most densely populated areas on the planet. Nearly 2 million people live in Gaza City, which is nearly 230 square kilometers wide.

“Dealing with tunnels is always difficult, under any circumstances, even when they are in mountainous areas, but when they are in urban areas everything is more complicated - in the tactical aspect, strategic, operational aspects, and of course, civilian protection,” said Professor Richemond-Barak, senior fellow at the Lieber Institute for Law and Land Warfare and the Modern War Institute at West Point. said.

Since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, which killed at least 1,400 people, mostly civilians in Israel, the IDF has repeatedly accused Hamas of hiding inside tunnels "under houses and Inside the buildings there were innocent Gaza civilians.”

The Ministry of Health in Gaza said in a statement on October 15 that Israeli military airstrikes killed at least 2,670 Palestinians.

The IDF is expected to hunt down this network of underground bunkers in its upcoming ground attack on Gaza. Israel launched a ground offensive into Gaza in 2014 in an effort to eliminate underground passages.

On October 13, Israel asked about 1.1 million people living in Gaza to move south before the operation took place, according to the United Nations. The United Nations' top human rights official said such an order could not be carried out on short notice in the middle of a war zone.

Moving civilians out of Gaza City would make removing the tunnels safer, Ms. Richemond-Barak said, but such operations would be dangerous.

The IDF can render tunnels temporarily unusable or destroy them. According to Ms. Richemond-Barak, bombing the tunnels is the most effective way to eliminate them, but such attacks can affect civilians.

It is clear that technology alone will not be enough to stop the underground threat.

Israel has spent billions of dollars trying to protect its border with a smart system of advanced sensors and underground walls, but Hamas was still able to launch an attack on October 7 by land, air and sea ​​route.