Egypt has in the past flooded Hamas tunnels along the Gaza Strip with sea-water or sewage, and has destroyed hundreds of homes on the Egyptian side of Rafah to remove the tunnels.
The Egyptian military began cracking down on tunnels stretching from the Hamas-run coastal enclave into the restive peninsula following the country’s September 2013 coup.
The IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) has also invested extensively in locating Gaza cross-border terrorist tunnels and has destroyed 15 of them this past year, including one tunnel which stretched into both Israel and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula near the Kerem Shalom crossing.
Hamas has been bringing terrorists and weapons from Egypt into the Gaza Strip for its attacks.
In 2018, Israel had completed 27 kilomters of its underground barrier designed to prevent tunnels from crossing into Israeli territory from Gaza. The barrier will also stretch into the Mediterranean to stave off Hamas infiltration by sea.
The anti-tunnel barrier along Israel-Gaza Strip border is an underground slurry wall constructed by Israel along the entire 40-kilometer (25 mi) length of the Israel-Gaza Strip border to prevent anti-Israel militant groups operating in the Gaza Strip, especially Hamas (which Israel, along with other countries, regards as a terrorist group), from infiltration into Israel by digging tunnels under the Gaza–Israel barrier. The project includes excavation to classified depths, and the construction of thick concrete walls combined with sensors and alarm devices.
The underground anti-tunnel barrier was completed in December 2021. The project had been estimated to cost 3 billion shekels ($833 million) to 3.5 billion shekels ($1.11 billion). It is located entirely on Israeli land.
In 2020, the deepest Gaza tunnel that has been found descended to 70 meters (230 feet deep). It was in from the southern part of the Gaza Strip.
Israeli forces found the tunnel in October 2020 after Israel’s anti-tunnel barrier detected anomalous underground activity, in the first operational success for the barrier, before it was completed along the entire border with Gaza.
The soldiers said Hamas had likely worked on the tunnel for years. The anti-tunnel barrier was completed a year ago after four years of construction, meaning the two projects had apparently been going on at the same time.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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This is interesting, thanks Brian. The slurry wall is an underground trench, of sorts, that extends long the entire border to a depth of more than 230 feet?
Between bunker busters, draining sea water into known tunnel openings, and fuel aerial explosives, being in a tunnel doesn’t sound terribly safe. So many ways to be attacked if the attacker controls the surface, doesn’t care to enter the tunnels itself, and has written off any potential hostages.
Why not simply flood them