The subterranean labyrinth known by locals as the Gaza Metro was originally believed to be elaborate; but the IDF now says it’s literally hundreds of miles long, with thousands of tunnel shafts used as entrances to its various routes beneath the surface of the enclave. Some 136 hostages kidnapped from Israel on October 7, 2023 by Hamas-led terrorists are still there, somewhere, albeit not all of them living any longer.
In fact, Israeli military officials now believe the tunnel network could stretch between 350 miles (563 kilometers) to nearly 500 miles (805 kilometers) long, an IDF official told JewishPress.com Tuesday evening.
Moreover, the IDF now estimates there are approximately 5,700 separate tunnel shafts that serve as entries to the various tunnels across the enclave.
To get a sense of what that means for the Israeli forces intensively searching for the hostages taken captive on October 7, 2023 and who are still being held captive by Hamas, consider this:
The Gaza Strip is just 25 miles (41 kilometers) long and 3.7 to 7.5 miles (six to 12 kilometers) wide, with a total area of 141 square miles (365 square kilometers). In other words, it could take the average driver less than an hour to drive from one end of the enclave to the other, and much less time to drive across from east to west.
In other words: Hamas has managed to build more than triple the miles of terrorist tunnels than there are square miles of land. There are up to three and a half miles of tunnels per each square mile, with nearly 41 tunnel entrances (tunnel shafts) per each square mile in the enclave.
These figures also, of necessity, change the Gaza Metro expense estimates published by the IDF last week as well. Using the information collected by IDF troops on the ground and analysis of the tunnels exposed by the forces up until now, the Intelligence Directorate revealed last Thursday that Hamas used more than 6,000 tons of concrete and 1,800 tons of metal to build the hundreds of miles of subterranean infrastructure.
“The amount of the investment is estimated at tens of millions of dollars,” the IDF said at the time. Given the current information, the investment may have, and probably did, in fact, run into the hundreds of millions. Much of the money used for building this labyrinth was stolen from foreign aid funds sent by well-meaning but naive countries who sought to provide Gazans with a better quality of life.
Hamas terrorist leaders, at least, did indeed acquire a better quality of life.
Some of the tunnels are so large that one can easily drive a vehicle through them — and in fact, Hamas leaders have done just that. Israeli intelligence has released a video of a Hamas senior commander being driven in a cushy car on a tour of one of the largest terror tunnels built in Gaza. The footage was obtained by IDF troops in Gaza and was checked by the IDF Intelligence Directorate.
WATCH: How Hamas Built its ‘Gaza Metro’ Terror Tunnels
The huge miles-long tunnel with its multiple branch-offs, was the flagship project of Muhammed Sinwar, the brother of Gaza’s Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar and commander of the Hamas Southern Brigade. Construction of the tunnel was documented in a Hamas video seized during Israeli military operations. As you can see, the tunnel looks similar to some of those that comprise the 665 miles of the New York City subway system, one of the most elaborate and sophisticated in the world.
Israeli forces are going to have to search every inch of those tunnels and their entry shafts in their quest to rescue the hostages, and then destroy every single one in the operation to dismantle the military and governing capabilities of Hamas and its terrorist allies in Gaza.
Israel Defense Forces said in December 2023 they had already uncovered some 1,500 tunnel shafts and underground passages in the tunnel network since the start of ground operations in Gaza in late October 2023. Of those, the IDF had destroyed 500 tunnel shafts by the end of the year, after thorough investigations to understand the characteristics of the tunnels before preparing the underground route for its destruction.
Each operation to destroy a tunnel and its various shafts is different but all of them require the same meticulous attention to detail to ensure its destruction while preserving the safety of the IDF soldiers carrying out the mission.
Given all of the above, one can now better understand why Israeli political and military leaders keep emphasizing to the families of the hostages, the general Israeli civilian population, and to international leaders (including US President Joe Biden and his Secretary of State Antony Blinken) that this war is going to take a “long time.”
