Israelis Shaken by Scope of Hamas' Network of Cross-Border Underground Tunnels

Netanyahu is committed to eradicating the tunnels, and perhaps Hamas as well.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Gaza tunnel network threat leaves Israelis shaken":

Yesterday, IDF paratroopers discovered another Hamas tunnel & a large weapons cache in the home of a Hamas operative http://t.co/PPKJ3CYeuW

— IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) August 1, 2014

Beneath the wheat and watermelon fields surrounding this farm community just outside the Gaza Strip lies a threat that helps explain the overwhelming public support in Israel for the war against the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

A little over a week ago, assailants dressed in Israeli military uniforms clambered out of an underground passageway about halfway between this hamlet of 400 or so people and a neighboring kibbutz, Nir Am. Israeli troops killed nine of them, but not before the attackers killed four soldiers.

The specter of such assaults via a large and sophisticated network of subterranean passageways has profoundly shaken Israelis long accustomed to a different threat from the coastal strip, that of rocket and mortar fire. Four such infiltrations have taken place since the start of the Gaza offensive, killing at least 11 Israeli soldiers and haunting the collective psyche.

"From this, you can't protect yourself," said Ruti Sheves, 64, who has lived in Kibbutz Erez for 40 years. "You don't have a shelter where you can run and be safe. You can't be safe from this."

Troops operating in and near Gaza have tracked 36 tunnels with dozens of access points, Deputy Foreign Minister Tzachi Hanegbi said Wednesday, as the Israeli offensive in Gaza entered its fourth week. Miles of passageways, many stocked with weapons and reinforced against explosions from above, pass near or directly beneath schools, mosques and hospitals, threading their way under some of the most densely populated terrain on Earth.

"We already finished destroying more than 22, and it's going on day and night," Hanegbi said. "We want to go as fast as possible."

Hamas for years has boasted that tunnels are an equalizer in an asymmetric battle. This week, Israelis were horrified by video Hamas released of an attack outside Nahal Oz, another farming community just outside the Gaza boundary, that left five Israeli soldiers dead.

Grainy but gripping, the attacker's-eye images begin underground, emerging to open fields and blue sky. Lasting nearly four minutes, the video shows the assailants — faces blurred to prevent identification — exchanging fire with Israeli soldiers. They stand over one body and fire repeatedly at close range. One attacker triumphantly displays a seized machine gun.

The army has countered with its own brand of tunnel video, releasing almost daily images of specially trained troops gingerly dismantling booby traps and uncovering dark passageways.

The presence of the tunnel network has long been known to Israel; one was used to stage the 2006 attack that resulted in the kidnapping of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. He was held captive in Gaza for five years before being freed in a massive prisoner exchange.

But the underground grid's scope, scale and sophistication, which has become clear over the course of the current offensive, has caught many by surprise. Concrete-lined, with electricity and metal tracks for transport, the carefully ventilated passageways appear to have been designed as the conduit for both large-scale assaults and clandestine abductions. Israel says it has found "kidnap kits" consisting of handcuffs and tranquilizers in some of the tunnels...